CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING PRACTICES IN NIGERIA: INSIGHTS FROM LITERATURE

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a consolidated map of governance-ESG disclosure literature in an emerging economy context, identifying methodological gaps and theoretical integration opportunities.

🏢実務担当者:Highlights the importance of board diversity and independence for credible sustainability reporting in Nigerian firms, useful for multinationals operating in the region.

🏛政策担当者:Offers evidence that regulatory effectiveness and stakeholder pressure are critical for substantive disclosure, suggesting policy design beyond framework adoption.

The increasing prominence of sustainability reporting has intensified scholarly and regulatory interest in understanding how corporate governance mechanisms influence the credibility, transparency, and quality of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures, particularly within emerging economies characterized by institutional weaknesses and evolving regulatory frameworks. This study systematically reviews and critically synthesizes the literature on corporate governance and sustainability reporting in Nigeria with the objective of consolidating empirical evidence, evaluating dominant theoretical perspectives, identifying methodological trends, and highlighting unresolved research gaps. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, the review examined peer-reviewed studies published between 2005 and 2025 and retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Following rigorous screening and quality assessment procedures, 74 studies were retained for analysis. The findings indicate that governance mechanisms (including board independence, board diversity, ownership structure, audit committee effectiveness, and board expertise) generally promote sustainability disclosure quality and transparency. However, their influence is neither uniform nor deterministic, as governance outcomes are significantly conditioned by regulatory effectiveness, institutional quality, stakeholder pressures, ownership concentration, and firm-specific characteristics. The review further reveals persistent concerns regarding symbolic compliance, selective disclosure, greenwashing, and institutional decoupling, suggesting that formal adoption of sustainability reporting frameworks does not necessarily translate into substantive accountability. The evidence also demonstrates considerable inconsistencies across studies arising from methodological variations, measurement differences, and contextual factors. Theoretically, the review supports an integrated explanatory framework combining agency, stakeholder, legitimacy, and institutional theories, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability reporting behaviour than any single theoretical lens. Methodologically, the literature remains heavily dominated by quantitative archival studies, with limited use of qualitative, mixed-method, longitudinal, and causally oriented designs capable of explaining the behavioural and institutional processes underlying disclosure decisions. By integrating fragmented evidence into a coherent analytical framework, this study advances understanding of governance-driven sustainability reporting in emerging economies and provides evidence-based insights for regulators, policymakers, corporate leaders, investors, and researchers seeking to strengthen sustainability disclosure quality, accountability, and sustainable corporate governance in Nigeria.

• semanticscholar https://remamr.com.ng/index.php/remamr/article/download/16/14first seen 2026-07-15 05:34:29