Corporate governance practices and timeliness issues in quality of financial reporting in Zimbabwe state enterprises and parastatals

The study is carried out because state enterprises and parastatals (SEPs) in Zimbabwe have not been submitting their financial statements on time. Previous studies on timeliness mostly focused on entities listed on Stock Exchanges, thus fail to focus on SEPs as entities that are critical to government objectives even if SEPs are not listed. Therefore, this study was conducted on Zimbabwean SEPs with reference to the impact of corporate governance practices and the relationship with timeliness in financial reporting for the period 2013 to 2021. The study focuses on TWO (2) parameters, 1) the influence of audit committee characteristics and 2) board quality and timeliness issues in quality of financial reporting. The study is guided by TWO (2) theories, agency theory and resource dependency theory and adopts the philosophy of pragmatism. This study used mixed method where quantitative data was generated from published annual reports and reports by the Auditor General covers 48 non-financial service sectors, SEPs over nine years involving 432 observations. Interviews method was used to collect qualitative data from a purposive sampling of permanent secretaries, finance director, audit director and the board of directors. Data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, SPSS Version 28 for quantitative data while qualitative data used thematic analysis, Results indicate that audit committee size, financial expertise, accounting and auditing experience and independence board reveals a significant influence on timeliness of financial reporting (p < 0.05) whilst board size, industry experience, and tenure shows insignificant effects (p > 0.05). Furthermore, presences of politicians on board does not have significant effect on the relationship among characteristics of audit committee, board quality and the timeliness of financial reporting (p > 0.05), except for interaction of presence of politicians on board and board size reveal significant effects (p < 0.05). This study has significant implications for various stakeholders, regulatory authorities, policy makers, users of financial statements, academia and researchers to improve the quality of financial reporting practices in SEPs Zimbabwe.