Corporate Goverance and Corporate Social Responsibility of Listed Companies in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined corporate governance and corporate social responsibility of companies quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 2010 - 2013. To achieve this objective, agency theory and resource dependency theory is adopted to understand the extent to which corporate governance characteristics such as board independence, board size, public ownership, foreign ownership and CEO duality impacts on corporate social responsibility disclosures of employee welfare and training, donation and community development and environmental and government policies. The data for this study were obtained from the annual reports of sampled companies and econometric tools of diagnostic test and regression analysis were used for the analysis of data. Our results suggest that there is a significant relationship between board independence, public ownership and foreign ownership on corporate social responsibility disclosures in the annual reports. However, the results also suggest no significant relationship between board size and CEO duality on corporate social responsibility disclosures in annual reports of Nigerian companies. Hence, the study concludes that corporate governance plays a major role in the disclosure of organizations social responsibility. The study also made useful recommendations on improving corporate social responsibility disclosure in annual reports.

Keywords: Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, Agency Theory