Linguistic Differences Between Successful and Non-Successful CEOs During the Financial Crisis

Josef Scheuerlein and Helena Chládková
Additional contact information
Josef Scheuerlein: Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 2019, vol. 67, issue 2, 583-595

Abstract: The present study represents an important attempt to explore some of the rhetorical aspects of effective leadership. The main purpose is to investigate possible linguistic differences between 104 effective and non-effective CEOs during the Financial Crisis (years 2008 and 2009) - using language and company performance as predictor variables. The word usage of the top and bottom 25 % of CEOs from the S and P500 within their corresponding letters to shareholders were analysed via the LIWC2015 quantitative content analysis software. The main focus is on the following linguistic markers: use of a) present achievement -, b) present power -, c) present risk -, d) emotionality -, e) present positive work - and f) visionary words. The results revealed that successful and non-successful CEOs use language equally, indicating that both also have the same leadership attributes. Our findings highlight the important role which communication plays in the leadership process, as well as, leadership effectiveness.

Keywords: linguistic differences; financial crisis; CEO effectiveness; LIWC2015 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://acta.mendelu.cz/doi/10.11118/actaun201967020583.html (text/html)
http://acta.mendelu.cz/doi/10.11118/actaun201967020583.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mup:actaun:actaun_2019067020583

DOI: 10.11118/actaun201967020583

Access Statistics for this article

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis is currently edited by Markéta Havlásková

More articles in Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis from Mendel University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().