Board Diversity and Intellectual Capital Disclosure: Does Ownership Concentration of Firms Improve the Disclosure Requirement in an Emerging Economy?

This study examines the moderating role of ownership concentration on the relationship between board diversity and intellectual capital disclosure. The study sample comprises four hundred and forty-four firm-year observations of listed non-financial firms in Nigeria from 2011 to 2020. After conducting pre- and post-estimation tests, the study runs robust ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test the developed hypotheses. The results of the selected firms revealed that board gender and board size have positively influenced the disclosure of intellectual capital. The study also found that board composition does not have an influence on the firm’s intellectual capital disclosure. The finding documented that the moderation effect of ownership concentration improves disclosure on the relationship of board gender and board size and intellectual capital disclosure of the selected firms. This study offers some interesting insight into board diversity variables and its effect on ICD of the studied firms. These findings are useful for management to consider the inclusion of more women as part of the board of directors of the non-financial firms in order to influence the decision to increase their ICD. The finding of the study is limited to only listed non-financial firms in Nigeria, This study attempts to fill the gap in the literature by providing insights into the relationship between board diversity, ownership concentration and intellectual capital disclosure. This study adds to the literature as it is one of the first empirical studies to find the moderating role of ownership concentration on the relationship between board diversity and intellectual capital disclosure.