Delivering performance: the capital market framing of financial numbers from a preparer perspective

Per Ahblom and Ebba Sjögren

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper investigates the work involved in making sense of specific financial numbers within a preparer organization and conveying this understanding at the corporate-capital market interface. An observation-based study was undertaken of the investor relations team’s interactions during the silent period up to the release of the quarterly report for a large Northern European bank. This rare empirical material was used to trace the successive framing (Goffman, 1974) of the Core Tier 1 ratio, a regulated measure of capital adequacy that the case organisation “delivered” on in its quarterly report. We argue, in contrast to prior literature, that preparers of corporate financial reporting are limited in their choices of the economic reality they present by the very process of constructing a meaning of financial numbers. The process of framing involved anchoring specific numerical representations to perceived intraorganizational realities, market audience expectations, as well as past representations of financial performance. We observed how specific interpretations of financial numbers, as expressed in words and phrases that became imbued with meaning, were moved between spatio-temporally separated sites through the circulation of cues. These cues provide a scaffolding for the enactment of interpretational frames within specific situations – and across sites. The development and circulation of cues in interactions between investor relations professionals and numerous other parties at the corporate-capital market interface contribute to making financial numbers meaningfully anchored, widely distributed and influential representations of organizational reality.

Keywords: financial reporting; framing; impression management; investor relations; Goffman; capital market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102819/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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:ehl:lserod:102819

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().