Impression Management in Letters to Shareholders: Evidence from Poland
Dominika Hadro,
Karol Klimczak and
Marek Pauka
Accounting in Europe, 2017, vol. 14, issue 3, 305-330
Abstract:
We study impression management in an emerging market setting with high ownership concentration. Using content analysis, we identify impression management techniques in a sample of letters to shareholders written in the Polish language by the 60 largest companies listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2008 and 2013. We find patterns in the occurrence of these techniques with the use of k-means clustering: the largest cluster includes letters that praise the management, while the rest include defensive arguments, discussions of negative outcomes and short, formal letters. The more concentrated ownership is, the shorter the letters are, which indicates that management invest less effort in communicating with investors. This is particularly visible in companies held by insiders, which tend to produce short, formal letters, devoid of impression management. In contrast, companies controlled by foreign shareholders prepare letters that are longer and which are more likely to present defensive arguments, while institutional non-controlling shareholders favour extensive disclosure. The results shed light upon communication practices in Central and Eastern Europe, and offer implications for regulators and managers that may help strengthen the information environment in regional stock markets.
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17449480.2017.1378428 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
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:taf:acceur:v:14:y:2017:i:3:p:305-330
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAIE20
DOI: 10.1080/17449480.2017.1378428
Access Statistics for this article
Accounting in Europe is currently edited by Lisa Evans
More articles in Accounting in Europe from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().