Corporate Governance and Intellectual Capital Disclosure of Listed Non-Financial Firms in Nigeria

Firms are required to adequately disclose their corporate information in order to minimize the problem of information asymmetry between the managers and other corporate stakeholders. Notwithstanding the significance of intellectual capital disclosure in the reduction of information asymmetry among corporate stakeholders, information about firm’s intellectual capital is disclosed in the corporate annual reports voluntarily and corporate governance practice plays significant role in the adequacy of voluntary disclosure. In view of this, this study provides empirical evidence of the impact of corporate governance on intellectual capital disclosure using the listed Nigerian non-financial firms as a case study. Corporate governance is represented with Board Size (BS), Board Independence (BI), Board Financial Expertise (BFE), Audit Committee Size (ACS), Audit Committee Independence (ACI) and Audit Committee Financial Expertise (ACFE) while intellectual capital disclosure is measured by intellectual capital disclosure index. Data are collated through secondary source of annual reports of the sampled firms for the period covering 2014-2024 and the results of the fixed-effects regression analysis reveal that BS insignificantly and negatively impacts intellectual capital disclosure (β1BSit = -.0594239, p = 0.150) while BI, BFE, ACS, ACI and ACFE significantly and positively influence intellectual capital disclosure (β2BIit = .1387609, p = 0. 0.000; β3BFEit = .1569342, p = 0.000; β4ACSit = .1984109, p = 0.000; β5ACIit = .1325203, p = 0.003; β6ACFEit = .1298492, p = 0.010). For this reason, the study concludes that corporate governance meaningfully improves intellectual capital disclosure and therefore recommends that regulatory agencies and corporate entities should strengthen corporate governance practice to encourage adequate disclosure of intellectual capital disclosure so that firm’s performance can be enhanced through improvement of information symmetry among stakeholders.