Publications

May 2019
Article

Who Consumes Firm Disclosures? Evidence from Earnings Conference Calls

By: Anne Heinrichs, Jihwon Park and Eugene F. Soltes

Using a set of proprietary records, we examine who consumes quarterly earnings conference calls and under which circumstances the calls are consumed. While there is significant interest in calls by institutional investors and sell-side analysts, we find that investors... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; Conference Calls; Firm News; Corporate Disclosure; Business Earnings; Situation or Environment

Purchase

07 Nov 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Causes and Consequences of Linguistic Complexity in Non-US Firm Conference Calls

Keywords: by Francois Brochet, Patricia Naranjo & Gwen Yu; Accounting

September 2015
Article

Speaking of the Short-Term: Disclosure Horizon and Managerial Myopia

By: Francois Brochet, Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim

We study conference calls as a voluntary disclosure channel and create a proxy for the time horizon that senior executives emphasize in their communications. We find that our measure of disclosure time horizon is associated with capital market pressures and executives'... View Details

Keywords: Short-termism; Management Styles; Disclosure; Conference Calls; Investing; Earnings Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Style; Forms of Communication

Working Paper

Private Lending and Preferential Treatment in Earnings Conference Calls

By: Xinlei Li, Tianshuo Shi and Christopher Williams

2016
Working Paper

Managers' Cultural Background and Disclosure Attributes

By: Francois Brochet, Gregory S. Miller, Patricia Naranjo and Gwen Yu

We examine how a manager’s ethnic cultural background affects managers’ communication with investors. Using a sample of earnings conference calls transcripts with 26,430 executives from 42 countries, we find that managers from ethnic groups that have a more... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure Tone; Individualism; Conference Calls; Ethnic Group; Management Style; Communication Intention and Meaning; Ethnicity; Corporate Disclosure; Financial Reporting

Read Now

July 2016
Article

The Capital Market Consequences of Language Barriers in the Conference Calls of Non-U.S. Firms

By: Francois Brochet, Patricia L. Naranjo and Gwen Yu

We examine how language barriers affect the capital market reaction to information disclosures. Using transcripts from the English-language conference calls of non-U.S. firms, we find that the calls of firms in countries with greater language barriers are more likely... View Details

Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure; Capital Market Consequences; Non-plain English; Spoken Communication; Complexity; Capital Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

2022
Working Paper

Passing the Mic: Career and Firm Outcomes of Executive Interactions

By: Wei Cai, Ethan Rouen and Yuan Zou

We exploit a unique feature of conference calls to study one type of interaction among executives—directly inviting colleagues to respond to analysts’ questions. We find that the frequency of initiating interaction is positively associated with an executive’s ability,... View Details

Keywords: Conference Calls; CEO Succession; Executive Interactions; Promotion; Interpersonal Communication; Personal Development and Career; Retention

Read Now

02 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Companies Choreograph Earnings Calls to Hide Bad News

The quarterly earnings conference call is a traditional way for public companies to disclose information regarding performance and strategy from the prior quarter. Wall Street analysts and other company... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services

17 Apr 2013
Research Event

Conference Challenges Gender Conventions

A recent conference at Harvard Business School addressed the on-the-ground reality of women leaders 50 years after the first women were admitted to the School's two-year MBA Program. And the reality is that women leaders are stuck—for... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

Article

Creating Firm Disclosures

By: Amir Amel-Zadeh, Alexandra Scherf and Eugene F. Soltes

Managers expend significant time and effort preparing disclosures about firm performance and strategy. Although prior literature has explored how variation in the style and presentation of disclosures impacts investors' perceptions of firms, little is known about how... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; Earnings Conference Call; Field Study; MD＆A; Textual Analysis; Corporate Disclosure

Register to Read

16 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Earnings Calls That Get Lost in Translation

chose to host conference calls in English, placing themselves on shaky linguistic ground. The recent working paper Capital Market Consequences of Non-Plain English in View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Summer 2013
Article

A Tale of Two Stories: Sustainability and the Quarterly Earnings Call

By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim

One of the challenges companies claim to face in making sustainability a core part of their strategy and operations is that the market does not care about sustainability, either in general or because the time frames in which it matters are too long. The response of... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Communication; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Investment; Environmental Sustainability

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03 Dec 2001
Research & Ideas

Healthcare Conference Looks At Ailing Industry

Cancer research, it has been said, is not unlike a group of blind men studying an elephant. One man feels the elephant's tail and says it is a rope. Another blind man handles its tusk and calls it a spear, and yet another declares its... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

06 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 6

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41031 Causes and Consequences of Linguistic Complexity in Non-U.S. Firm Conference Calls Authors: Francois Brochet, Patricia Naranjo, and Gwen Yu Abstract We examine the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

The Trick of Balancing Business and Government

Asked which institutions must be in place in order for African countries to grow, experts on a panel at the Africa Business Conference had no shortage of suggestions. One panelist, representing the International Monetary Fund, voted for a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Research Summary

Dawn Matsumoto's research investigates managers' financial reporting decisions including the incentives driving these decisions and the impact of these decisions on capital market participants. She is interested in the role of financial intermediaries (such as... View Details

26 Sep 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Playing Favorites: How Firms Prevent the Revelation of Bad News

Keywords: by Lauren Cohen, Dong Lou & Christopher Malloy; Financial Services

June 2012
Article

Short Termism: Don't Blame the Investors

By: Francois Brochet, George Serafeim and Maria Loumioti

The article presents research on executives and corporation investor relations. A study is conducted of the language used by executives in conference calls discussing earnings with investors and financial analysts. A correlation was found between the use of language... View Details

Keywords: Financial Management; Business Earnings; Managerial Roles; Investment; Agency Theory; Communication Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations