Sustainability Reporting and Firm Financial Performance in Nigeria: A Review of Variables

Abstract

The study reviewed the Firm Financial performance measurement variables of empirical studies conducted on Sustainability Reporting and Firm Performance in Nigeria using a content analysis approach with the view to understand the inconclusiveness and mixed findings by the studies. The study reveals that the mixed finding is as a result of neglecting key performance ratios like Price-Earnings Ratio, Return on Sales, Expense to Assets, Cash to Assets, Sales to Assets, Expenses to Sale, Abnormal returns; annual stock return, Operating Cash Flow, Labor productivity, Critical business Return on Asset, Cost of Capital, Market Value Added, Operation Profit, Return on Investment, Market-to-book value, Log of market capitalization, Growth in Sales, Stock Repurchases, Sales Per Employee, Return on revenue, Output per staff, Cost Per Service Provided, and Cost per Client Served, Cumulative Abnormal returns, Profit Per Employee and Return on Fixed Asset. Model misspecification by combining two different variables, and ignoring other firm performances measurement variables and lack of focusing on ratios that best explain performances in a given sector like Reserve to Production Ratio, Reserve Replacement Ratio and Finding Cost per Barrel of Oil in the oil and gas sector and Return on Deposit in the banking sector. The study recommends that similar studies should be conducted using the measure of performance proxies that are ignored.