Contribution of Corporate Governance on Performance of Listed Companies in Kenya

Leadership is a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. Corporate governance has dominated leadership policy agenda in developed market economies for more than a decade and African continent is gradually adopting it on their policy agenda on leadership and governance of their organisations. The Nairobi Securities Exchange (formerly Nairobi Stock Exchange) (NSE) is the principal stock exchange of Kenya. This study was to establish the contribution of Corporate Governance on leadership performance of Listed Companies in Kenya. The target population consisted of the 62 listed companies that had been listed at the NSE in 2015. The study used primary data which was collected using questionnaires. Data was analysed and presented using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the results of this study. The study found that good corporate governance is a major ingredient to leadership performance and there must be deliberate effort by company leadership to create systems that ensure there is effective corporate governance. The study recommends that board of directors should actively promote long term performance, take control of the company business and significantly promote growth in financial performance, market performance, shareholder return, share value and customer satisfaction. The study encourages company leaders to draw strong strategies to counter any political interferences, ethnicity and nepotism which are the major cancerous effect to leadership styles and structures, leadership composition, leadership independency, stakeholders’ ownership and ownership concentration which are significant factors to performance.