Reporting of Good and Bad News: Case of the Pharmaceutical Industry

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F25940082%3A_____%2F19%3AN0000041" target="_blank" >RIV/25940082:_____/19:N0000041 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Reporting of Good and Bad News: Case of the Pharmaceutical Industry

Original language description

Corporate narratives now play a crucial role in the company’s annual reporting, being a good source of information for shareholders to track the company’s performance. These narratives, however, are not regulated and are often an opportunity for companies to employ impression management techniques. The purpose of this research is to investigate the different disclosure strategies that organizations undertake, specifically regarding good aspects of their performance versus bad ones. The aim is to answer the research question – “What impression management tactics are companies using when reporting good vs bad news?”. Using a case study approach, the subject of this research is the European pharmaceutical industry, specifically three of the top companies – Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis. The data chosen for research are the letters to shareholders from each of the companies’ ten latest annual reports (2009-2018). The first part of the research involved coding the good and bad news in the letters to shareholders, following a predetermined coding rationale. These codings were then carefully analyzed to determine whether any impression management techniques were present. The main identified tactics are: stressing the positive and downplaying the negative, differential reporting, attribution, and competence enhancement. Additional impression management tactics, not necessarily pertaining to good and bad news, include ingratiation and the use of emotion. The implications drawn from this research are that the shareholders, and stakeholders in general, need to be vigilant when reading the corporate narratives, to discern when the meaning of the text is somehow manipulated to manage their impressions of the companies.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

D - Article in proceedings

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50205 - Accounting

Project

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Continuities

N - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z neverejnych zdroju

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Article name in the collection

7th International Scientific Conference on IFRS - Global Rules and Local Use - Beyond the Numbers

ISBN

978-80-907602-0-2

ISSN

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e-ISSN

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Number of pages

21

Pages from-to

148-168

Publisher name

Anglo-American University

Place of publication

Praha

Event location

Praha

Event date

Oct 10, 2019

Type of event by nationality

WRD - Celosvětová akce

UT code for WoS article

000649685400012