A conceptual perspective of internal audit quality and local government performance in Nigeria

The study highlights the influence of internal audit quality on the performance of an organization.Internal audit quality components such as competence, quality of internal audit work, objectivity and independence, training and development, and management support for the internal audit function are critical for enhancing organizational processes.It relies on extant literature in developing the conceptual framework and arriving at hypotheses that guide the study. Thus, the study suggests that the quality of internal audit influences performance and this link opens up a new perspective in examining the local government performance in Nigeria

The Influence of Environmental Supervisory Agencies on Environmental Information Disclosure in Nigeria

Purpose: - Environmental reporting based on triple bottom line (TBL) reporting consists of three basic elements of profit, people and planet depicting economic, social and environmental information respectively.Past studies have tend to examine relationships between these three collectively and other variables especially corporate characteristics.Of greater concern to environmentalists however, are environmental information dissemination, which has been greatly ignored.This study is therefore, an attempt to examine exclusively the relationship between pure environmental information disclosure and environmental monitoring agencies.Methodology: - Using environmentally sensitive firms operating in Nigeria, the study employed content analysis and regression to determine the relationship covering the period 2009-2014.Findings: - It concluded that both significant positive and negative relationships exists between environmental reporting and monitoring agencies.Research Implications: - This shows that while NSE contributes positively to environmental information disclosure, DPR and NESREA are having a negative impact on environmental information dissemination. Practical Implications: - There is a clear indication that the DPR & NESREA are inefficient/ineffective.Originality/Value: - The lack of treating environmental information dissemination independently from other elements of sustainability is what this study capitalized on.Furthermore, studying the influence of environmental monitoring agencies (NSE, DPR and NESREA) on environmental reporting is mostly overlooked by scholars

Sustainability reporting by firms in the Nigerian economy: social versus environmental disclosure

Purpose: There is need for specialization on individual categories of sustainability information disclosure. An attempt has been made in this study to make a comparison between the environmental and social categories of sustainability disclosure.Methodology:Guided by the G4 sustainability reporting guidelines, environmentally sensitive companies in the Nigerian economy were analyzed for 6 years (2009-2014).Separate assessments and comparisons were made between environmental reporting and social reporting on the impact, influence and significance of the relationships using Stata13SE analytical tool. Findings: The results shows that firms performed better on social reporting than on environmental reporting in terms of higher sustainability disclosure rates and significant relationships.Research Implications: The current trend of reporting sustainability information disclosure under both social and environmental reporting is encouraging considering the fact that disclosure on sustainability issues in Nigeria is voluntary. Practical Implications:Firms in environmentally sensitive sectors are disclosing sustainability information than expected. Originality/Value:The uniqueness in comparing sustainability disclosures between environmental information and social information

Sustainability Reporting by Firms in the Nigerian Economy: Social versus Environmental Disclosure

Purpose: - There is need for specialization on individual categories of sustainability information disclosure.Attempts has been made in this study to make a comparison between the environmental and social categories of sustainability disclosure.Methodology: - Guided by the G4 sustainability reporting guidelines, environmentally sensitive companies in the Nigerian economy were analysed for 6 years (2009-2014).Separate assessments and comparisons were made between environmental reporting and social reporting on the impact, influence and significance of their relationships using Stata13SE analytical tool.Findings: - The results shows that firms performed better on social reporting than on environmental reporting in terms of higher sustainability disclosure rates and significant relationships.Research Implications: - The current trend of reporting sustainability information disclosure under both social and environmental reporting is encouraging considering the fact that disclosure on sustainability issues in Nigeria is voluntary.Practical Implications: - Firms in environmentally sensitive sectors are disclosing sustainability information than expected.Originality/Value: - The uniqueness in comparing sustainability disclosures between environmental information and social information

Board Characteristics and Sustainability Reporting: Environmental Agencies' Moderating Effects

The Paris “Climate Deal” is an indication of the seriousness at international level, being attached to environmental degradation.  The efficiencies of government environmental agencies in the disclosure of environmental information by sensitive firms in Nigeria, is what the study to examine.  Covering the periods 2009 to 2014, secondary data was obtained from firms' financial, sustainability and TBL statements selected at random from six sectors of the economy.  Through the use of Stata13 analytical tool, regression of the variables was carried out.  The result showed an encouraging disclosure index of about 55%.  In particular, all the relationships measured had significant relationships and applied the latest version of GRI (G4).  Environmental agencies were also tested for their role in sustainability reporting.  The study recommends nonexecutive members of the board of Directors be educated on environmental matters so as to offset their negative impact on the disclosure of environmental information.       Keywords: Board Characteristics, Environmental Protection Agencies, Sensitive firms JEL Classifications: H23, R11

Corporate Ownership and Sustainability Reporting: Environmental Agencies' Moderating Effects

In third world economies like Nigeria, the role of foreign ownership of businesses compared to local ownership on environmental issues has been given very little attention.  Foreign investors may assist in the fight against environmental degradation.  This research determines the relationship between environmental information disclosure and ownership structure in combination with environmental agencies using the latest version of GRI (G4).  The study is a pioneer application of environmental agencies' role in sustainability reporting and considers 81 companies in 6 environmentally sensitive industries of the economy.  From a stratified random selected sample of 67 firms, the study tested for the relationship from 2009 to 2014.  The outcome showed an inverse and significant relationship between environmental disclosure and ownership structure.  This forced the recommendation that local ownership should be encouraged to grow at a faster rate so that a positive impact will be reflected on environmental information disclosure. Keywords: Corporate Ownership Structure, Environmental Disclosure, Environmental Agencies JEL Classifications: G31, H23, R1

Computer crime and security: A survey of financial institutions in Malaysia

As the world moves towards a virtual age, the increasing use and reliance on computers can not be avoided.Indeed, the use of computers has touched every aspect of life of people around the world.On the other hand, computer technologies also have ability to destroy those benefits if they are wrongly used to gain unethical advantage from these technologies.Studies in United States of America, Europe and Australia show that computer crime has grown along with the increase jn the use of computers.Considering the alarming growth figures of computer crime around the world, it is believed that Malaysia too is also experiencing similar problems.So, this study is attempts to determine the scope of computer crime in Malaysian financial institutions as well as raise the level of security awareness. The results will potentially provide us with better understanding of the threats as we gathered the database

Corporate governance characteristics and firm performance: Inferences from Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSES) regression

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between corporate governance (CG) characteristics and performance (proxied by return on equity-ROE) of listed Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) in Nigeria for the period 2012-2016.The concept of CG has become an issue of great concern to various stakeholders due to various corporate fiascos in several economies.In the same vein, this issue of corporate failures has likewise occurred in Nigeria due to ineffective application of corporate governance, where corporate board members neglect their functions coupled with the presence of inadequate disclosure in reporting of risk and its related activities, and inadequate risk management frameworks especially in the DMBs (Sanusi, 2010). These resulted in the review of the erstwhile 2009 CG code in Nigeria to the issue of a new one in 2011 with the expectation that it will enhance firm performance (Kakanda, Basariah, & Chandren, 2017).However, there is a stream of studies on the relationship between CG characteristics and firm performance (for instance, Arora & Sharma, 2016; Elyasiani & Zhang, 2015; Vafeas, 1999), yet, their results are mixed and fragmented due to differences in governance system, economic, social, and legal settings (Kakanda et al., 2016).Hence, this study hypothesized that CG characteristics have a positive relationship with firm performance.However, the result of this study depicts that the relationship between the explanatory variables and firm performance is mixed since both significant and insignificant positive and negative effects are obtained

Proposed corporate governance system for Nigeria: market-based vs. institutionally-based model

The purpose of this paper is to address the corporate governance system in Nigeria as to whether it is likely capable of mitigating the agency problem. Following an overview of both the market-based and the institutionally-based corporate governance models the authors propose the institutionally-based model for Nigeria considering the country’s peculiarities. This is the first attempt to specifically suggest that the institutionally-based model would be preferred for Nigeria against the present market-based model that is in operation. This paper has implications for regulators as there is the need to provide adequate protection for investors in view of the weak enforcement and compliance mechanism that obtains in Nigeria