Corporate Governance Attributes and Firm-specific Features as
Determinants of Sustainability Initiatives of Listed Financial and
Non-Financial Companies in Nigeria
Abstract
The study’s population covers all listed corporations on the Nigerian
Stock Exchange (NSE), both financial and non-financial. As of December
2021, there are 168 financial and non-financial entities on the NSE (NSE
Daily official listing, March 1, 2022). However, this study considers
the quoted companies rated and ranked by the CSRHUB consensus economic,
social, and governance (ESG) rating amongst all sectors in Nigeria
because of their enormous contribution to the field of CSR globally. The
time frame for the research is six (6) years, from 2016 to 2021. An
assessment of companies’ roles in promoting environmentally friendly
practices has been conducted, as we deem it necessary to study the
effect of sustainability initiatives between the financial and
non-financial sectors. This study adopted a purposive sampling technique
in drawing its samples. The purposive sampling procedure necessitates
focusing on entities with precise structures that could offer
information on a study issue (Etikan et al., 2016). Thus, twenty-six
(26) corporations in Nigeria have taken a stance on corporate social
responsibility, which forms the sample of this study.
The unweighted disclosure index is used to measure SI, which is the
dependent variable for this study. as in Bashiru et al. (2022); Waheed
et al. (2021); Jamil et al. (2021); and Saleh et al. (2010), utilized to
measure the degree of the SI dichotomous variable. If a company
disclosed SI items in its annual report, it would be counted as “1,”
while companies that did not reveal an item would be recorded as “0”
(Gujarati, 2009). Total score values for SI disclosure are aggregated
from all sub-scores of SI, including 14 economic dimensions, 12 social
dimensions, 15 environmental dimensions, and 15 governance dimensions.
The disclosure model scoring is additive, and unweighted indexes are
calculated. The disclosure indexes comprising 56 sustainability
performance indicators were utilized. The total amount of scores is
computed by dividing the firm’s scores by the total number of potential
points.
Six independent variables are used, composed of governance attributes
and firm-specific operating features. The operating features consist of
company size (CSZE), company age (AGE), and leverage (LEV), while the
governing features comprise board size (BSZE), board independence
(BOIND), and board gender diversity (BGD). Issa et al. (2022), Abu
Qa’dan and Suwaidan (2019), and Hussain et al. (2018) all agree that
BSZE can be quantified by counting the number of board members. The
Board of Directors’ Independence (BOIND) is defined as the number of
independent, non-executive directors as a percentage of all board
members (Al Amosh & Khatib, 2021; Jizi & Nehme, 2018; Rashid, 2018).
BGD, or board gender diversity, is the percentage of women on a board of
directors relative to the total number of board members (Chams &
Garca-Blandón, 2019; Orazalin & Baydauletov, 2020).
When calculating CSZE, natural logarithms of the firm’s total assets are
used (Hussain et al., 2018; Crisóstomo et al., 2020). The number of
years that a company has been in operation is used to calculate AGE
(Issa et al., 2022). Total debt is divided by total assets to get the
LEV (Crisóstomo et al., 2020; Li et al., 2018).