The corporate failures and scandals over the last two to three decades worldwide including Ghana have highlighted the need for guidance to tackle the various risks and problems that can arise in the systems of governance in many organizations. As a result, the implementation of good corporate governance at every firm has been a necessity. This paper investigates the influence of quality corporate governance practices on firm performance in Ghana. A sample size of 22 firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange and their 5-year dataset from 2010 to 2014 were collected for the study. Regression analysis was conducted to determine the association between corporate governance mechanisms (board composition, board gender diversity, audit committee effectiveness, the board size, and CEO-duality) and firm performance (return on asset and return on equity). The result of the study indicates that at the 5% level of significance; board composition, board gender diversity, and audit committee presence have an insignificant negative relationship with the performance of firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange. Meanwhile, board size and CEO-duality were found to relate negatively significant with firm performance. The result again showed that as leverage relates negatively significant with firm performance, firm size relates positively significant with the performance of firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange. This study, therefore, makes an important contribution to the global discourse on corporate governance mechanisms prediction on firm performance in an increasingly globalized world. The study was organized into five chapters. Chapter one consists of the introduction to the study; the background to the study, problem statement, purpose of the study, objectives of the study, research hypothesis, significance of the study, limitations of the study, scope of the study, the definition of terms and organization of the study. Chapter two deals with the review of existing literature that is related to the concepts of the research topic under consideration (corporate governance and firms performance). This chapter also presents the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of the study. Chapter three explores the methodology used for the study. It covers issues such as data sets for the study, time horizons for the study, sampling design for the study, the variables for the study, statistical techniques, and data analyses. The chapter concludes with a summary of the chapter. Chapter four comprises the compilation, analysis, and discussion of data collected from the annual reports. It covers the descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation, and finally, presents the results of the regression model. Chapter five deliberates on a summary of findings, conclusion recommendations, and limitations of the study.

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The corporate failures and scandals over the last two to three decades worldwide including Ghana have highlighted the need for guidance to tackle the various risks and problems that can arise in the systems of governance in many organizations. As a result, the implementation of good corporate governance at every firm has been a necessity. This paper investigates the influence of quality corporate governance practices on firm performance in Ghana. A sample size of 22 firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange and their 5-year dataset within 2010 to 2014 were collected for the study. Regression analysis was conducted to determine the association between corporate governance mechanisms (board composition, board gender diversity, audit committee effectiveness, board size and CEO-duality) and firm performance (return on asset and return on equity). The result of the study indicates that at the 5% level of significance; board composition, board gender diversity and audit committee presence have insignificant negative relationship with the performance of firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange. Meanwhile board size and CEO-duality was found to relate negatively significant with firm performance. The result again showed that as leverage relate negatively significant with firm performance, firm size relate positively significant with the performance of firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange. This study therefore makes an important contribution to the global discourse on corporate governance mechanisms prediction on firm performance in an increasingly globalised world. The study was organized into five chapters. Chapter one consists of the introduction to the study; the background to the study, problem statement, purpose of the study, objectives of the study, research hypothesis, significance of the study, limitations of the study, scope of the study, definition of terms and organization of the study. Chapter two, deals with the review of existing literature that is related to the concepts of the research topic under consideration (corporate governance and firms performance). This chapter also presents the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of the study. Chapter three explores the methodology used for the study. It covers issues such as data sets for the study, time horizons for the study, sampling design for the study, the variables for the study, statistical techniques, and data analyses. The chapter concludes with a summary of the chapter. Chapter four comprises the compilation, analysis and discussion of data collected from the annual reports. It covers the descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation, and finally, presents the results of the regression model. Chapter five deliberates on summary of findings, conclusion recommendations, and limitations of the study.

Required: With specific examples from the information above, critique the abstract highlighting on the major elements of an abstract.