Board Characteristics and Audit Quality: The Moderating Role of Gender Diversity

Abstract

The incessant corporate scandals engulfing the corporate world today calls for great concern, also even the so-called big four recently have had their fair share of this blame too. Against this backdrop, we investigated to investigate the impact of board characteristics on audit quality of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The study was driven by the positivist research philosophy and a deductive research approach using a multi-method quantitative research design. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to summarize the data and to draw inference on the population studied. We employed the Binary Probit Regression in testing the hypotheses stated. Findings revealed that board size had a positive and significant relationship on audit quality. The study found no evidence on the relationship between board independence, female gender on audit quality. The study also found no evidence on the moderating effect of the presence of a female on the board on the nexus between board independence and audit quality. The study concluded that board characteristics do not affect audit quality. Hence, we recommended that the Non-executive director on the board should be reduced in manufacturing firms to improve audit quality.