Financial communication during the COVID-19 crisis: Impression management?

La communication financière à l’épreuve de la crise COVID: une gestion des impressions ?

Grégoire Davrinche (), Corinne Bessieux-Ollier and Guillaume Dumas ()
Additional contact information
Grégoire Davrinche: Université de Lille, IAE Lille - IAE Lille University School of Management - Lille - Université de Lille
Guillaume Dumas: UM - Université de Montpellier, MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - UM - Université de Montpellier

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this article, we study the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis on the impression management strategies employed by French listed firms. This exogeneous shock had a strong impact on firms' financial results. Hence, we observe if and how managers changed the way they presented information related to non-GAAP earnings, through the use of obfuscation strategies. Data on impression management were manually collected from annual earnings press releases issued by SBF 120 firms during the period 2018-2020. We find that the level of impression management significantly decreased following the COVID-19 crisis, especially for firms in the most affected sectors. Nevertheless, this decline is less pronounced for firms that underperformed relative to their sector and for firms that experienced a significant drop in financial performance (irrespective of the sector to which they belong). Our results suggest that firms whose drop in performance could be attributed to internal causes (very unfavorable results, results below sector standards) remained concerned about their image and maintained their level of impression management despite the crisis.

Keywords: impression management COVID-19 crisis non-GAAP earnings Résumé gestion des iMpressions crise du coVid-19 résultats; impression management; COVID-19 crisis; non-GAAP earnings Résumé gestion des iMpressions; crise du coVid-19; résultats; non-GAAP earnings; résultats non-GAAP impression management; crise du COVID-19; gestion des impressions; gestion des impressions crise du COVID-19 résultats non-GAAP impression management COVID-19 crisis non-GAAP earnings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01-29
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05267098v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Comptabilité Contrôle Audit / Accounting Auditing Control, 2025, Tome 31 (1), pp.105-166. ⟨10.3917/cca.311.03.0105⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-05267098

DOI: 10.3917/cca.311.03.0105

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().