The Mediating Effect of CEO Characteristics on the Relationship between Corporate Governance Attributes and Earnings Management in Nigerian Financial Sector: Proposed Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Corporate governance comprises a couple of relationships that exist between the management of the company, its auditors, its board of directors, shareholders and other stakeholders. These relationships in other words, involve various rules and incentives and then offer the structure through which the aims and objectives of the company are set, and the means of achieving these objectives as well as providing effective transparency among managers and shareholder. This study attempt to investigate the mediating effect of CEO characteristics on corporate governance attributes and earning management due to the recent financial frauds in the Nigerian financial institutions. The study covered all the 58 listed financial institutions on the main flow of the Nigerian Stock Exchange comprising banks and other non-banks financial services in 2016, the entire population is also the sample size of the study. The study applied the use of a secondary source of data collection from annual reports and financial statements of the selected companies from 2012 to 2016.The expected outcomes of the study relied on the earlier studies which suggested that corporate governance attributes play a vital role in safeguarding the integrity of financial reporting process, the CEO characteristics is perceived to save as a link between corporate governance attributes and earnings management, to act as a third party which helps in mitigating information asymmetry and clash of interests among management and shareholders.