The board of directors is charged with the responsibility of managing the firm and its
operation. The significantly negative relationship between board size and capital structure
suggests that larger boards adopt low debt policy. SMEs with larger boards tend to
impress on the owner-manager to employ more equity capital in order to increase firm
performance. Managements of such firms are mostly pressurised by the board to open up
their ownership by employing external equity. Owner-managers are often persuaded to
adopt lower leverage and rather increase their equity base by increasing the number of
shareholders. This result is also consistent with previous studies focusing on large
companies (see Berger et al, 1997). However, the result contradicts other empirical
findings on larger firms (see Jensen, 1986; Wen et al,2002; Abor, 2007)