5.0 Conclusion and Implications
This paper explores the link between board characteristics and capital structure decisions of Ghanaian SMEs. The corporate governance variables used for this study include board size, board composition, board skill and CEO duality. The empirical results show statistically significant and negative association between capital structure and board size. This study result indicates that Ghanaian SMEs pursue high debt policy with a larger board size. The results of this study also show significantly positive relationships between debt ratio and board composition, board skill, and CEO duality.
The issue of corporate governance has important implications on the financing decisions of Ghanaian SMEs. SMEs with more directors are often able to persuade owner- managers to adopt lower leverage and rather increase their equity base by increasing the number of shareholders or forming partnerships with other investors. The existence of non-executive directors could lead to better management decisions and help firms in attracting better resources given that external board members may have good knowledge or useful information on financing facilities. The overall average board size is approximately 4 with non-executive directors representing 49.6% of board membership. As expected, the results of this study show that the owner-manager often acts as the chairman of the board. Ghanaian SMEs have the tendency of employing more debt in order to maintain control.
Corporate governance can greatly assist the SME sector by infusing better management practices, effective control and accounting systems, stringent monitoring, effective regulatory mechanism and efficient utilisation of firms’ resources through external independent directors and subsequently resulting in improved performance. SMEs with well established corporate governance structures are able to gain easier access to credit at lower cost since such firms are able to repay their debt on time. Easier access to credit at lower cost, ultimately leads to improved company performance. The area of corporate governance and capital structure decisions of SMEs however needs further research in order to further develop some of the insights delivered by this study