CEO Attributes and Accounting Numbers

Abstract

The study investigates how the homogenous attributes of the Chief Executive Officers of listed Banks in Nigeria influence the performance of the Banks. The study is rooted in the positivist research philosophy, directed by the inductive approach, and based on the panel research design which combines the characteristics of cross-sectional and longitudinal research strategies. Data was sourced from the content analysis of the annual reports of the banks. The study is a census of the target population of listed banks operational over the period 2009 to 2016. The panel regression technique forms the basis of data estimation, having achieved the usual regression diagnostics. The result of the analysis could not reject the proposition that the tenure of the CEO has no significant influence on the performance of the listed Banks at the 5% level of significance. The result of the interaction between the CEO tenure and bank size, could not sustain the Graham et al. (2010) hypothesis that longer CEO tenure in larger organisations has a positive implication for accounting numbers. The influence of women CEO on the performance of the Banks in Nigeria is negative and significant at the 5% level. Flowing from the above, it is recommended that the CEO of Nigerian Banks should be allowed longer tenure, long enough to acclimatise with the culture and the internal workings of the Bank. No doubt, longer tenure will help them improve the performance of the banks. Without prejudice to the high-performing women CEOs and women leaders all over, the result of the study does not support women as the drivers of banks in Nigeria.