Accounting Narratives And Impression Management In Corporate Reporting: A Review

This paper explores impression management in corporate reporting through accounting narratives, by an in-depth analysis of the strategies and motives of impression management, disclosure media of impression management and the theoretical frameworks. Archival research design using systematic review of existing literature is adopted to achieve the research objectives. The study concludes that accounting narratives are used for impression management in corporate reporting. The study found that the main managerial motives for impression management in corporate reporting is either concealment or attribution. It was discovered that impression management strategies used in corporate reporting include reading ease manipulation, rhetorical manipulation, thematic manipulation, visual and structural manipulation, performance comparisons, attribution of organizational outcomes and choice of earnings number. While the media used to achieve impression management include the annual reports, letters to shareholders, Operating and financial reviews, management discussion/analyses, IPO prospectuse, Takeover documents, Press releases, Websites/Social Media and Conference calls. The study recommends that regulators/standards setting bodies should design a regulatory framework for narrative disclosure in corporate reporting, by limiting and selecting the language and tones of presenting narratives.