Board characteristics and involvement in strategic decision making - The Nigerian perspective

Corporate Governance practices in Nigeria are still at the developmental stage where organizations operate more in compliance with regulations. There is therefore much less research on how Nigerian boards operate and how they effectively perform their roles. This paper focuses on the corporate governance practices in public companies in Nigeria and explores the involvement of the board in the company's strategy decision making. Our results show that the average number of board members is 7.8 with a board size of 10 directors being the most popular and outside directors being in the majority. 76.9 percent of the respondent companies have chairmen that are not the Chief Executive Officers (CEO). Using primary data, our results show that there is a high level of board involvement in the company's strategy decision making. However, there is no correlation between board involvement in strategic decision making and a number of governance variables (board size, board independence and CEO duality). This paper adds to the scanty literature available on corporate governance practices in emerging markets.