Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract We provide evidence that some managers use a multi‐period, coordinated strategy involving inflated current‐period discretionary accruals and optimistic forecasts of future earnings to delay the revelation of bad news. Inflating discretionary accruals increases investor expectations of future performance, and issuing optimistic earnings forecasts of future earnings supports the inflated accruals and extends the horizon for managers to benefit. This strategy is more pronounced for firms that engage in earnings management outside of GAAP, suggesting intentional behavior. Our evidence indicates that managers use this coordinated strategy when firms experience significant bad news and cannot delay revealing all of the bad news through accrual management. We also find that managers use this coordinated strategy when focusing on short‐term performance due to career concerns (i.e., dismissal) or retirement or when they have shorter stock option vesting schedules, which motivates them to inflate investor expectations for shorter‐term personal benefits. Furthermore, managers using this strategy do not hold deep in the money exercisable stock options, which is consistent with managers' private assessment of a higher (lower) likelihood of releasing bad (good) news in the future.

Abstract Security prices are affected by information strategically disclosed by managers as well as by informed trading of outsiders and vice versa. However, market frictions, such as short‐selling costs and constraints, significantly affect trading in financial markets. In this article, we examine the joint determination of voluntary disclosure, security prices, and short‐selling, and address the following issues: How do major market frictions affect managerial disclosures? How do disclosures influence strategic informed trading in the presence of frictions? What does the interaction of strategic disclosure and informed trading imply for price efficiency? We find that short‐selling (trading) costs have a substantial impact on the equilibrium disclosure policy and its interaction with informed trading and price efficiency. Because of endogenously binding short‐sale constraints, better‐informed traders can either deter or encourage disclosure, thus reconciling mixed available evidence on the relation between short‐sale constraints and managerial disclosure. Furthermore, price efficiency need not improve with managers' information endowment because greater disclosure can endogenously inhibit informed short‐selling in equilibrium. Our analysis also generates novel empirical predictions relevant to the literature on managerial disclosure, shorting, and price efficiency.

Abstract In this paper, I conduct three experiments to investigate whether and how relative performance information (RPI) influences employee advice‐seeking and how advice‐seeking, in turn, affects employees' trust in their manager. The first experiment shows that, in a setting where the manager can provide useful advice, RPI increases advice‐seeking frequency, which is marginally positively associated with trust in the manager. The second experiment indicates that RPI increases advice‐seeking frequency when the manager's advice is highly useful, with a marginally significant effect when the advice is of low usefulness. Mediation analyses reveal that RPI alleviates employees' concerns about self‐presentation toward their manager, thereby increasing advice‐seeking frequency, but only when the manager's advice is of high usefulness. The third experiment shows that advice usefulness impacts employees' trust in their manager by influencing their perceptions of managerial competence and benevolence. This paper discusses theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Abstract Professional skepticism is an essential element of a healthy audit. In this study, we present a framework in which the two elements of professional skepticism—skeptical judgment and skeptical action—differ in that skeptical judgment involves paying attention to audit risks, whereas skeptical action often involves overcoming personal risks. This distinction suggests that the optimal conditions for skeptical judgment may differ from the optimal conditions for converting that judgment to skeptical action. Specifically, interventions that promote vigilance will facilitate judgment because they make potential accounting issues salient, but such a focus will also draw attention to potential adverse consequences of taking action. To test this proposition, we conduct two studies in which we align skeptical judgment and skeptical action with two pairs of distinct and contrasting mindsets to operationalize differential vigilance. Our results suggest a duality in skepticism which has important implications for researchers and practitioners designing interventions to improve audit quality.

Abstract Prior research demonstrates that audit professionals encounter client incivility. We extend this research by examining whether client incivility negatively impacts auditors' judgments and whether any adverse effects are reduced when auditors use coping strategies. We first collect descriptive survey evidence revealing that client incivility toward auditors is more widespread than currently documented. Next, using an experiment, we predict and find that auditors who experience client incivility (vs. those who do not) are less likely to challenge aggressive reporting if they are not prompted to cope. We also find that active coping reduces the adverse impact of client incivility, whereas findings for passive coping are inconclusive. Audit standards and users of financial statements expect auditors to fulfill their duty of maintaining a high level of professional skepticism irrespective of external circumstances. Our findings highlight the challenges auditors face in meeting these expectations when facing uncivil clients, thus posing a threat to audit quality.

Abstract One view of the socialization experienced by professionals in global Big 4 firms suggests that the intensity of socialization engenders a strong and deep‐rooted professional identity. We scrutinize this claim by drawing on interviews with partners who retired from lifelong employment in Big 4 firms in Japan. Through partners' reflections on their experiences in detaching from the firm, we examine how socialization manifests in partners' identity work. We find that partners' identity, which often appears entrenched, invariable, and heroic, can be highly fragile and vulnerable to changing circumstances. Before leaving the firm, interviewees attempt to reconcile their Big 4 “graduation” with feelings of obsolescence and a growing distance from previous accomplishments. After leaving the firm, interviewees revisit the identity built throughout their careers. Unable to move on to a selfhood detached from that identity, they refashion their identity relative to their former Big 4 partner self, backgrounding their private life and post‐firm professional affiliations. Not knowing how to “close the books,” retired partners seek comfort in the old “plot” and in the old “characters,” finding ways to “keep the books open” even after the “setting” has changed. Our results reconfirm the powerful socialization experienced by partners during their tenure with the Big 4 but run counter to scholarship that characterizes the identity of Big 4 partners as strong and fixed. Rather, we demonstrate the insecurity underlying our professional service heroes' identity work and the contingent identity work processes that partners engage in while navigating departure from the Big 4.

Abstract We interview public company tax executives to provide new evidence on how corporate taxpayers experience and navigate the income tax audit process. Interviewees describe being “targeted” by “tax police” and having to “defend” their positions. Thus, we adopt a structural metaphor of tax audits as police investigations and use a framework from the policing literature to explain what influences taxpayers' perceptions of fairness during audits. Perceptions of fairness are important as targets of investigations are more likely to cooperate and accept outcomes when they perceive policing processes as fair. Tax executives aim to obtain fair and consistent treatment by compiling documentation, consulting with peers and external advisors, and educating tax agents. Audits are adversarial, however, and taxpayers also act strategically to secure favorable outcomes and appeal or litigate when they believe outcomes are unfair. Interviewees note variation in the extent to which tax authorities create frameworks that facilitate fair audit processes and whether tax agents implement these frameworks. Our study offers new insights into the tax audit process from corporate taxpayers' perspectives. First, public company taxpayers view tax audits as redundant to financial statement audits of their tax positions. Thus, tax audits may have limited scope to deter tax noncompliance. Second, tax executives are not passive actors; they take deliberate actions to shape audit outcomes. Third, audits are less efficient for everyone when taxpayers perceive them as procedurally unfair. Investments by tax authorities that increase perceptions of fairness may enhance audit efficiency by increasing taxpayers' cooperation and acceptance of outcomes.

Abstract This study examines the informational role of local newspapers in institutional investments. Exploring local newspaper closures across US counties, we document that institutional investors significantly reduce their holdings in firms located near the closed newspapers. The post‐closure decrease in institutional holdings is concentrated for non‐local or non–hedge fund institutions. In contrast, institutions that are likely to possess information advantages—local institutions or hedge funds—do not decrease their holdings and may even increase them when faced with a lack of local news coverage. Further analysis reveals that local newspaper closures adversely impact institutional investors' ability to predict firms' stock returns, particularly for non‐local or non–hedge fund institutions. Collectively, we provide novel evidence suggesting that local newspapers are a key channel through which institutional investors acquire geographically scattered information.

Abstract The study develops theorizing of external organizational communications that entail impression management. This includes developing linkages to Goffman's work and a Goffmanian research tradition. Our approach innovatively articulates dimensions of impression management entailing the presentation of others and nuanced practices of what we term organizational altercasting (OAC). Altercasting has been conceptualized in a Goffmanian tradition. OAC, seen as implicated in more developed organizational impression management (OIM), involves an organization constructing for another/others (an audience with whom the organization interacts) a persona that is congruent with the organization's goals. Our theorizing also innovatively draws from Goffmanian insight in a coherently associated way—namely, by appreciating the pervasiveness of interaction rituals, including those that take place in an organizational communication style using today's technology. We suggest that OAC especially tends to entail tact. The empirical focus is a case analysis of a Polish bank (CB) facing challenges of cybersecurity and disclosing/communicating externally on cybersecurity/cyber‐risk. For insight, we address this question: In terms of a developed theorizing of OIM (including OAC), how did the bank respond to external challenges, related to cybersecurity, through public disclosures/communications? A content analysis of types of multimedia, with attention given to context, indicated the importance of the presentation of others. We were drawn to how CB's customers, a key audience, were presented in CB's external communications, highlighting long‐term engagement in, and an increase in the significance of, these communications. For our case, articulation of OIM and the presentation of others was further developed through OAC, with particular attention given to communication style vis‐à‐vis modern technology. Our work promotes OAC's wider applicability, including beyond cyber‐risk disclosures.

Abstract In contrast to prior research that typically focuses on the characteristics of the audit committee (AC), we investigate how intergroup differences between the AC and the rest of the board (ROB) affect monitoring effectiveness. Drawing on group literature and the similarity attraction paradigm, we hypothesize that high intergroup differences between the AC and the ROB impede communication and information sharing. Poor “fit” between the AC and the ROB can lead to an “us versus them” mentality that reduces trust and hinders knowledge exchange, diminishing monitoring effectiveness. Using a sample of listed US firms, we find that intergroup differences between the AC and the ROB in terms of their respective characteristics are linked to a lower likelihood of reporting an existing or likely material weakness, higher discretionary accruals, and a lower likelihood of a going‐concern opinion among financially distressed firms. These negative effects are most pronounced when the AC and the ROB are very different (i.e., in the upper quartile and decile of the AC‐ROB distance distribution). Additional analyses show a higher probability of a Big R restatement, a lower likelihood of a Big R restatement when a material misstatement likely exists, and a lower likelihood of goodwill impairment when one is expected. Notably, the adverse impact of AC‐ROB dissimilarity is more prominent when the AC is less powerful or lacks group stability. Regulators and companies should be aware that AC composition decisions cannot be made in isolation because large intergroup differences in director profiles between the AC and the ROB reduce monitoring effectiveness.