Exploring Financial Management Practices and Firm’s Competitiveness: Evidence from Ghana Club 100 Firms

Abstract

Ghana Club 100 was established by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) to acknowledge the top 100 performing firms in Ghana and to enhance firm competi-tiveness and economic growth. The paper aims to explore how financial management practices influence the competitiveness of firms listed on Ghana Club 100. This study adopted a sequential mixed research design comprising of a questionnaire from 80 firms and an interview guide to gather data from 10 selected companies. Data from the questionnaire was analyzed using SPSS descriptive statistics and NVivo software was used to thematically analyze the interview transcripts. The findings identified five financial management practices relating to accounting information system, capital structure, capital budgeting, working capital and financial reporting, which are deemed critical to firm performance and competitiveness in terms of financial health, growth and operational efficiency in Ghana. Although the generalizability of the study is limited to the small sample size, the findings can be applied to improve the firm performance of companies in Ghana. Future research aims to critically evaluate the effectiveness of the five financial management practices.