ABSTRACT

The study evaluated on the effect of corporate attributes on financial disclosure of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria for the period 2014 to 2019. Data were collected from the financial statement of fifty-five (55) listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Longitudinal and ex-post factor research design were adopted. Content analysis of the annual reports of a cross sectional sample of listed companies for six years was conducted, collected data were scrutinized and analyzed by employing the Structural Equation Modeling technique (SEM) using Smart PLS. The results comprehensively revealed that corporate attributes have significant effects on financial disclosures of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Specifically, the result further revealed that firm size, audit committee size and firm growth have a significant effect on mandatory, voluntary and total disclosures while firm age, profitability and leverage have no significant relationship. Also, the result shows that there is a significant relationship between corporate attributes and financial disclosure. Conclusively, it is obvious that studies on disclosure practices are more prevalent in developed countries than developing countries, it is evident that in Nigeria, relatively few attempts have been made to investigate accounting attributes and financial disclosure, therefore the study moved a step further by examining not only the measurement model which captures the individual relationships, but the structural model outlook which captures the combined effect of corporate attributes on financial disclosures. Furthermore, the researcher dis-aggregated financial disclosure into three components. They include mandatory disclosure, voluntary disclosure and total disclosure. This was to allow for the determination of the association between corporate attributes and financial disclosure variant of manufacturing companies. The study therefore recommends that government should encourage smaller manufacturing companies by promoting the development of IT in Nigeria. Every organization should be able to afford state-of-the-art IT tools. This will reduce information cost and encourage the disclosure of adequate financial information. Again, that adequate steps should be taken by regulatory bodies to ensure full disclosure with relevant international accounting disclosure requirements by all listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Also, effective enforcement programmes should be put in place to protect the interest of the diverse user groups. Stringent reward/punishment programme should be introduced in order to ensure that all listed manufacturing companies comply with the mandatory accounting standards in Nigeria. Finally, in other to increase the extent of disclosure by manufacturing companies as ascertained in the results, government should pave way for easy access to credit facilities by companies since any credit facility given to companies will increase their disclosure index and stability which will invariably increase investor’s confidence.