维也纳证券交易所年度报告的可读性:管理混淆假说的检验

IF 1.6 Q3 BUSINESS Central European Business Review Pub Date : 2022-05-10 DOI:10.18267/j.cebr.307
Bernhard Stellner
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引用次数: 2

摘要

本研究考察了德语国家奥地利的年度报告可读性与公司业绩之间的关系。不完全披露假说、管理混淆假说和代理理论认为,业绩较低的公司在战略上利用披露的可读性来混淆负面结果。对投资者来说,阅读、分析和解释数据是一件代价高昂的事情;这削弱了此类数据对公司声誉和股价的负面影响。我们使用LIX和Flesch公式来衡量年度报告中致股东的信件和/或董事会访谈的可读性。样本包括在维也纳证券交易所黄金市场上市的37家公司及其2009年至2020年的数据。公司业绩是通过营业额、利润和股价的变化来衡量的。分析的部分大多显示出高到极高的难度。在观察期间,可读性水平没有显著变化。我们发现,业绩较低的公司的年度报告并不难阅读,因此,无法证实管理层混淆假说。利润/损失的变化对可读性的显著影响被仔细观察到。这种观察的可能原因可能是德语的特点、统计异常值、观察期长、投资者关系办公室更专业,以及公司和利益相关者之间不断变化的沟通渠道。最后一点,改变沟通渠道,也将模糊假设及其在可读性方面的应用再次提出来讨论。对中欧受众的影响:我们的研究表明,中欧国家也面临着年度报告可读性低的问题。尽管如此,我们看不到在公司披露中存在混淆的明显趋势。我们在
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Readability of Annual Reports on the Vienna Stock Exchange: A Test of Management Obfuscation Hypothesis
This research examines the relation between annual report readability and company performance in a German-speaking country, Austria. The incomplete revelation hypothesis, management obfuscation hypothesis and agency theory assume that firms with lower performance strategically use readability in their disclosures to obfuscate negative results. For investors, reading, analysing, and interpreting data becomes a costly affair; this weakens the negative effect of such data on a firm’s reputation and share price. We use LIX and Flesch formulas to measure the readability of letters to the shareholders and/or interviews with the board in annual reports. The sample consists of 37 companies that are listed on the Prime Market of the Vienna Stock Exchange and their data from the year 2009 to 2020. Company performance is measured by the change in turnover, profit, and share price. The analysed sections mostly show high to very high levels of difficulty. During the observation period, readability levels do not change significantly. We find that the annual reports of firms with lower performance are not harder to read and, therefore, cannot confirm the management obfuscation hypothesis. A significant influence of change in profit/loss on readability is minutely observed. Possible reasons for this observation could be characteristics of the German language, statistical outliers, the long observation period, more professional investor relations offices, and changing communication channels between companies and stakeholders. The last point, changing communication channels, also puts the obfuscation hypothesis and its application to readability up for discussion again. Implications for Central European audience : Our study shows that also Central European countries are confronted with low levels of readability in annual reports. Nevertheless, we cannot see a clear tendency towards obfuscation in corporate disclosures. our on the
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来源期刊
Central European Business Review
Central European Business Review Business, Management and Accounting-Business and International Management
CiteScore
3.10
自引率
7.70%
发文量
27
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