IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v159y2019i2d10.1007_s10551-018-3796-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hear Me Write: Does CEO Narcissism Affect Disclosure?

Author

Listed:
  • Gilberto Marquez-Illescas

    (University of Rhode Island)

  • Allan A. Zebedee

    (Clarkson University
    Hunan University)

  • Linying Zhou

    (California State University – San Marcos)

Abstract

Through earnings announcements, conference calls, and other press releases, corporate executives have an opportunity to frame the narrative of financial disclosures. Numerous studies have shown that textual tone significantly influences stock returns, suggesting that through word choice, upper management may impact market reaction. In this study, we examine the influence of CEO personality traits on corporate disclosures by analyzing the tone of earnings announcements for a sample of Fortune 500 CEOs over nearly two decades. Our hypotheses are twofold: (1) that qualitative disclosures in firms with narcissistic leaders will be biased upward and (2) the bias will moderate as CEOs becomes older. Our empirical results support these hypotheses and suggest that more narcissistic CEOs tend to reinforce their grandiose self-image by issuing more positive earnings announcements but this desire wanes with CEO age. We also find that the stock market response to the tone of the earnings announcement is less pronounced for more narcissistic CEOs, suggesting the market takes into account the bias in narcissistic CEO announcements.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilberto Marquez-Illescas & Allan A. Zebedee & Linying Zhou, 2019. "Hear Me Write: Does CEO Narcissism Affect Disclosure?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 401-417, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:159:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3796-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3796-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-018-3796-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-018-3796-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2014. "Measuring Readability in Financial Disclosures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1643-1671, August.
    2. Thomas Schleicher & Martin Walker, 2010. "Bias in the tone of forward‐looking narratives," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(4), pages 371-390.
    3. Renée B. Adams & Patricia Funk, 2012. "Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Does Gender Matter?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 219-235, February.
    4. Angela K. Davis & Jeremy M. Piger & Lisa M. Sedor, 2012. "Beyond the Numbers: Measuring the Information Content of Earnings Press Release Language," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(3), pages 845-868, September.
    5. Berger, Allen N. & Kick, Thomas & Schaeck, Klaus, 2014. "Executive board composition and bank risk taking," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 48-65.
    6. Price, S. McKay & Doran, James S. & Peterson, David R. & Bliss, Barbara A., 2012. "Earnings conference calls and stock returns: The incremental informativeness of textual tone," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 992-1011.
    7. Liu, Baixiao & McConnell, John J., 2013. "The role of the media in corporate governance: Do the media influence managers' capital allocation decisions?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 1-17.
    8. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Wu, Di, 2013. "Word power: A new approach for content analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 712-729.
    9. Serfling, Matthew A., 2014. "CEO age and the riskiness of corporate policies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 251-273.
    10. Mark Clatworthy & Michael Jones, 2003. "Financial reporting of good news and bad news: evidence from accounting narratives," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 171-185.
    11. Angela K. Davis & Isho Tama†Sweet, 2012. "Managers’ Use of Language Across Alternative Disclosure Outlets: Earnings Press Releases versus MD&A," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(3), pages 804-837, September.
    12. Feng Li, 2010. "The Information Content of Forward‐Looking Statements in Corporate Filings—A Naïve Bayesian Machine Learning Approach," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5), pages 1049-1102, December.
    13. Bill Francis & Iftekhar Hasan & Jong Chool Park & Qiang Wu, 2015. "Gender Differences in Financial Reporting Decision Making: Evidence from Accounting Conservatism," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1285-1318, September.
    14. Simon Ho & Annie Li & Kinsun Tam & Feida Zhang, 2015. "CEO Gender, Ethical Leadership, and Accounting Conservatism," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 351-370, March.
    15. Arslan-Ayaydin, Özgür & Boudt, Kris & Thewissen, James, 2016. "Managers set the tone: Equity incentives and the tone of earnings press releases," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(S), pages 132-147.
    16. Yan Luo & Linying Zhou, 2017. "Managerial ability, tone of earnings announcements, and market reaction," Asian Review of Accounting, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(4), pages 454-471, December.
    17. Oleg V. Petrenko & Federico Aime & Jason Ridge & Aaron Hill, 2016. "Corporate social responsibility or CEO narcissism? CSR motivations and organizational performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 262-279, February.
    18. Antoinette Schoar & Luo Zuo, 2016. "Does the Market Value CEO Styles?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 262-266, May.
    19. Prendergast, Canice & Stole, Lars, 1996. "Impetuous Youngsters and Jaded Old-Timers: Acquiring a Reputation for Learning," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1105-1134, December.
    20. Khan, Walayet A. & Vieito, João Paulo, 2013. "Ceo gender and firm performance," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 55-66.
    21. Joel Amernic & Russell Craig, 2010. "Accounting as a Facilitator of Extreme Narcissism," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 96(1), pages 79-93, September.
    22. Charles Ham & Mark Lang & Nicholas Seybert & Sean Wang, 2017. "CFO Narcissism and Financial Reporting Quality," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(5), pages 1089-1135, December.
    23. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yan Luo & Linying Zhou, 2020. "Textual tone in corporate financial disclosures: a survey of the literature," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(2), pages 101-110, September.
    2. Bassyouny, Hesham & Abdelfattah, Tarek & Tao, Lei, 2020. "Beyond narrative disclosure tone: The upper echelons theory perspective," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. D. G. DeBoskey & Yan Luo & Linying Zhou, 2019. "CEO power, board oversight, and earnings announcement tone," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 657-680, February.
    4. Ingrid E. Fisher & Margaret R. Garnsey & Mark E. Hughes, 2016. "Natural Language Processing in Accounting, Auditing and Finance: A Synthesis of the Literature with a Roadmap for Future Research," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 157-214, July.
    5. Liu, Pu & Nguyen, Hazel T., 2020. "CEO characteristics and tone at the top inconsistency," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    6. Kothari, Pratik & Chance, Don M. & Ferris, Stephen P., 2021. "Bragging rights: Does corporate boasting imply value creation?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    7. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2016. "Textual Analysis in Accounting and Finance: A Survey," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 1187-1230, September.
    8. Yekini, Liafisu Sina & Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr & Millo, Yuval, 2016. "Market reaction to the positiveness of annual report narratives," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 415-430.
    9. Mather, Paul & Ranasinghe, Dinithi & Unda, Luisa A., 2021. "Are gender diverse boards more cautious? The impact of board gender diversity on sentiment in earnings press releases," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3).
    10. Bassyouny, Hesham & Abdelfattah, Tarek & Tao, Lei, 2022. "Narrative disclosure tone: A review and areas for future research," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    11. Gehan A. Mousa & Elsayed A. H. Elamir & Khaled Hussainey, 2022. "Using machine learning methods to predict financial performance: Does disclosure tone matter?," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(1), pages 93-112, March.
    12. Özgür Arslan‐Ayaydin & James Thewissen & Wouter Torsin, 2021. "Disclosure tone management and labor unions," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 102-147, January.
    13. Beattie, Vivien, 2014. "Accounting narratives and the narrative turn in accounting research: Issues, theory, methodology, methods and a research framework," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 111-134.
    14. Christina Bannier & Thomas Pauls & Andreas Walter, 2019. "Content analysis of business communication: introducing a German dictionary," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 79-123, February.
    15. Wolfgang Breuer & Andreas Knetsch & Astrid Juliane Salzmann, 2020. "What Does It Mean When Managers Talk About Trust?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 473-488, October.
    16. Ali Ataullah & Andrew Vivian & Bin Xu, 2018. "Optimistic Disclosure Tone and Conservative Debt Policy," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 54(4), pages 445-484, December.
    17. Kris Boudt & James Thewissen, 2019. "Jockeying for Position in CEO Letters: Impression Management and Sentiment Analytics," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 77-115, March.
    18. Qian Wang & Duowen Wu & Lina Yan, 2021. "Effect of positive tone in MD&A disclosure on capital structure adjustment speed: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(4), pages 5809-5845, December.
    19. Kim, Jongkyum & Lim, Jee-Hae & Yoon, Kyunghee, 2022. "How do the content, format, and tone of Twitter-based corporate disclosure vary depending on earnings performance?," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    20. Xi Fu & Xiaoxi Wu & Zhifang Zhang, 2021. "The Information Role of Earnings Conference Call Tone: Evidence from Stock Price Crash Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 643-660, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:159:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-018-3796-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.