Board Gender Diversity, Audit Committee Activities and Financial Reporting Quality of Firms Listed in Nairobi Securities Exchange, Kenya

The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effect of audit committee activities on the relationship board gender diversity on financial reporting quality of firms listed in Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). This study was anchored on the Upper Echelon theory and Stakeholder’s theory, The study employed a longitudinal research design and also a positivism philosophy was adopted in the study. A census approach was used whereby all the firms that remained continuously listed for 7 years for the period 2011-2017 inclusive were studied. The data collection instrument used in this study was data collection sheet. Fixed Effect Model (FEM) was used to analyze the panel data, since it was found to be an appropriate estimation technique by the Hausman test. The findings revealed that gender diversity had negative and statistically significant effect on financial reporting quality. However, audit committee activities positively moderated the relationship between gender diversity and financial reporting quality. Therefore, for financial reporting quality to be improved, the study recommends the following as attested by the findings. First, this study recommends that the board of directors of firms should be made up of directors that is not gender diverse, which is one gender should form a majority as this improves financial reporting quality. The findings of this study would provide essential guidelines for decision-making in regard to board gender diversity and audit committee activities for firms striving to enhance financial reporting quality.