Corporate Governance as a Strategic Management Tool

The objective of the study is to determine the effectiveness of corporate governance as a strategic tool in improving performance of listed manufacturing company in Nigeria. The specific objective is to examine the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and performance of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. This study adopted quantitative research; the population for the study is seventy four, which is the total number of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Twenty manufacturing companies were purposively selected from the seventy four manufacturing companies listed on the Nigeria stock exchange that formed the population of the study. The study is based on content analysis of the selected firms’ annual reports for ten years, from year 2008- 2017. Time series data were collected to determine corporate governance and profitability performance of the selected companies. Five (5) aspects of corporate governance were investigated; these include board size, gender, independence, meeting and audit committee size. The data collected were analyzed using panel data analysis. Findings revealed that heterogeneity effect across firms and over time are incorporated into the model via the error term, Board Size (BOS) and Board Gender Disparity (BGD) had negative impact on the financial performance of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. It is recommended that organizations should use corporate governance as a strategic tool to achieve corporate objectives especially by ensuring the board meets regularly to monitor and control. Keywords: Audit Committee Size, Board Gender Disparity, Board Independence, Board Meeting, Board Size, Corporate Governance, Corporate Performance, Strategic Management DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/10-14-11 Publication date:July 31st 201