Purpose: This study aims to achieve two objectives. First, to explore the main concerns of corporate governance stakeholders in Nigeria, focusing on three broad fields of institutionalisation: political, social and economic. Second, to examine the coverage accorded to the main institutional influences in the primary code of corporate governance in Nigeria.\ud
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Design/methodology/approach: Employing an intrepretivist research philosophy, the study adopts a qualitative research strategy. Data was collected using semi-structured, face-to-face interviews from three groups of stakeholders (executives, regulators and corporate governance consultants). Their responses and views were analysed using a qualitative content analysis (QCA) technique.\ud
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Findings: In highlighting the main institutional elements driving corporate governance in Nigeria, this study revealed that individuals wield the power to influence existing institutions in developing countries. This contradicts the position in developed economies where the robustness of institutional frameworks acts as a constraint on the behaviour of economic agents. This thesis also show that the recognition accorded to the main institutional frames in the primary code of corporate governance is inadequate. Based on these findings, a bottom-up approach to corporate governance is proposed where the concerns of economic agents are prioritised, as a strategy for building sustainable institutional frameworks.\ud
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Originality/value: The study reinforced the need to re-examine the basis of agency and institutional theories in the context of developing economies. The study also made a case for the re-evaluation of the significance of executives in agency theory literature regarding developing economies, relying on the level of economic sophistication and the general lack of knowledge by shareholders with respect to their rights. This observation will enrich the scholarship on agency and institutional theories as this study draws attention to alternative strategies for understanding agency (human institutionalism) and institutional (bottom-up approach) theories