Examining the Link between Technical Efficiency, Corporate Governance and Financial Performance of Firms: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between technical efficiency and both the corporate governance and financial performance of listed financial firms on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange using three theoretical approaches: shareholder theory, stakeholders’ theory, and resource dependence theory. We employed a stochastic frontier analysis to examine the impact of technical efficiency on the link between corporate governance and financial performance on the one hand, and, on the other, multiple regressions comprised of OLS and Poisson estimates to analyze a data-generating set sourced from 2007 to 2020. The results of our OLS estimates suggest that a negative but significant relationship exists between the corporate governance mechanism and the financial performance of the listed firms. When we subject the analysis to the Poisson estimates, the relationship becomes positive and significant. Our results have some positive implications.