Board Diversity and Sustainability Disclosure Practices of Listed Industrial Goods Companies in Nigeria

The continuous involvement of companies in non-sustainable practices and lack of responsibility toward the environment and society have brought economic crises and untold hardship on almost all the stakeholders. This could also be worsened by the absence of well diversified board of directors. The main objective of this study was to ascertain the effect of board diversity on the sustainability disclosure of industrial goods companies listed on the floor of the Nigeria Exchange Group from 2019-2023. The research design adopted for this study was ex post facto, secondary data were used and the population of the study was 13 listed industrial goods firms in Nigeria while the sample of 11 companies were purposively selected. The data were analyzed using panel least square regression analysis and the statistical package employed was E-views version 10. The findings of the study revealed that board nationality diversity, board age diversity and board experience diversity have significant effect on sustainability disclosure of listed industrial goods companies in Nigeria. Thus, based on these findings, it was concluded that board diversity has significant effect on sustainability disclosure of industrial goods companies in Nigeria. It was therefore recommended that the board composition should be expanded to include at least 10% of foreign members as foreign directors can impact firms’ disclosure practices through their monitoring and advisory roles. It was also recommended that the board should consist of well experienced board members as experienced members are equipped with deeper understanding of the risks and opportunities in a specific industry.