Impression Management and Retrospective Sense-Making in Corporate Narratives: A Social Psychology Perspective

By D. Merkl-Davies, Niamh M. Brennan, S. Mcleay. 2011

297 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose - Prior accounting research views impression management predominantly though the lens of economics. Drawing on social psychology research, this paper seeks to provide a complementary perspective on corporate annual narrative reporting as characterised by conditions of “ Design/methodology/approach - A content analysis approach pioneered by psychology research is used, which is based on the psychological dimension of word use, to investigate the chairmen's statements of 93 UK listed companies. Findings - Results suggest that firms do not use chairmen's statements to create an impression at variance with an overall reading of the annual report. It was found that negative organisational outcomes prompt managers to engage in retrospective sense-making, rather than to present a public image of organisational performance inconsistent with the view internally held by management (self-presentational dissimulation). Further, managers of large firms use chairmen's statements to portray an accurate (i.e. consistent with an overall reading of the annual report), albeit favourable, image of the firm and of organisational outcomes (i.e. impression management by means of enhancement). Originality/value - The approach makes it possible to investigate three complementary scenarios of managerial corporate annual reporting behaviour: self-presentational dissimulation, impression management by means of enhancement, and retrospective sense-making.

Subfields: Accounting, Social Psychology, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a3a1b54a0145869953dabb4cd1bd0ef7b03a90f3

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Citations in the corpus

Discharging not-for-profit accountability: UK charities and public discourse (2012, methodology): “Narrative reporting is a complex and multi-dimensional process, with the documents not only serving as a vehicle for transmitting information, but also to provide an account of organizational outcomes as a result of managerial actions and decisions, and a means of forging relationships with stakehol”
A conceptual framework of impression management: new insights from psychology, sociology and critical perspectives (2011, background): “…1977, p.35), then managers may be prompted to engage in impression management to counteract undesirable consequences of information releases in the form of unfavourable analyst reports and credit ratings, negative share price movements and loss of stakeholder support (Merkl-Davies et al., 2011).”
The tone of business model disclosure: an impression management analysis of the integrated reports (2015, methodology): “…and accounting literature has depicted a variety of IM methods used in corporate reporting (Merkl-Davies and Brennan 2007; Brennan et al. 2009; Merkl-Davies et al. 2011): thematic manipulation (e.g. the use of positive or negative words and sentences), attribution of organizational outcomes…”
Strategic leadership in organizational crises: A review and research agenda (2021, background): “…Harrison, 2006) and social desirability bias (Fisher, 1993), future research would be well-advised to follow prior research and draw upon unobtrusive measures such as corporate imagery (Chatterjee and Hambrick, 2007; Ray and Smith, 2011) and texts (Aerts and Yan, 2017; Merkl-Davies et al., 2011).”