Board characteristics and involvement in strategic decision making

Purpose – This paper aims to review how corporate governance is institutionalised in Nigeria and examine the relationship between board size, CEOs’ duality, board composition and the board's involvement in strategy.Design/methodology/approach – A structured questionnaire was sent by post to the chairmen of 138 publicly quoted companies in Nigeria in November 2004.Findings – Using primary and secondary data, our results suggest that the Nigerian public companies have embraced some principles of the Code of Best Practices for Public Companies. There is a high level of board involvement in strategy decision‐making process, but no correlation was found between board involvement and a number of governance variables (board size, board independence and CEO duality).Research limitations/implications – The sample of 39 responding companies is small although it represents a 28 per cent of response rate and is representative of the Nigerian stock market. However, we are unable to look at other factors such as indust...