Abstract:   This study examines the impact of corporate risk-taking behaviour on the efficiency of working capital management of the listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria over the period 2015 to 2024. Data on 40 sample companies (400 firm-years) were used and analyzed by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to determine the optimization frontier, and the model was estimated using Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE), which can control serial correlation and corporate growth. The empirical results show that financial risk is positively and significantly influencing the working capital efficiency (β = 0.457, p <0.05), operating risk is positively and significantly influencing the working capital efficiency (β = 0.019, p <0.05) while the impact of capital intensity risk on working capital efficiency is insignificant. This study is an empirical contribution as it moves the discussion on working capital away from the linear ratios and to a multi-dimensional DEA optimization frontier directly connected to behavioral risk attributes. In practice, it is suggested that manufacturing corporate boards should establish a working-capital structure that provides for the least asset slacks and also has a strong liquidity cushion to avoid structural insolvency, while being adjusted to the level of risk associated with the business

Keywords:   Efficiency, Value-creation, Liquidity, Receivables.

Publisher:   ILMA UNIVERSITY

Published:   17 July 2026

Issue:   Issue 1 (2026-07-17) : Volume 22

E-ISSN:   2409-6520

P-ISSN:   2414-8393