OECD Principles of Corporate Governance: Compliance among Ghanaian Listed Companies.

Abstract

This study has explored the corporate governance practices in Ghanaian listed firms using the OECD five principles of corporate governance. These principles are: Rights of Shareholders, Equitable Treatment of Shareholders, Roles of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance, Disclosure and Transparency, and Responsibility of the Board. A set of questionnaire containing carefully selected questions on each principle was administered in 20 selected firms on the Ghana stock market. The participants included three stakeholders of each company. Namely: Board of Directors, Management and Audit Committee. Percentages, mean, and standard deviation were used to describe the responses from the respondents. Again, the Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to determine if there were significant difference between the responses of each group. The study revealed that OECD corporate governance practices are implemented in Ghanaian listed firms with Rights of Shareholders being the most practice (mean=3.94, SD=0.8747).