Executive individualism and the tone of firms' annual reports

Wei Jiang, Chuyue Shi, Yu Li and Sujuan Xie

Accounting and Finance, 2024, vol. 64, issue 5, 4567-4591

Abstract: Based on the literature on cross‐cultural psychology, this study examines the effect of executive individualism on the tone of the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) sections of firms' annual reports within one country. By employing an executive's place of origin in northern (southern) China to measure executive individualism (collectivism), we find that executive individualism increases the positive tone of the MD&A sections of firms' annual reports. Further analyses show that the positive relationship between executive individualism and MD&A tone is more pronounced when the executive has a longer tenure or is a local (vs. a non‐local). Finally, we find that executive individualism reduces the informativeness of MD&A in predicting firms' future accounting performance. In sum, the findings of this study suggest that executives' personal traits have important implications for the tone and informativeness of corporate non‐financial reporting.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.13284

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:bla:acctfi:v:64:y:2024:i:5:p:4567-4591

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0810-5391

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting and Finance is currently edited by Robert Faff

More articles in Accounting and Finance from Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().