'It's a long story…' - Impression Management in South African Corporate Reporting

Jugnandan, Shreeya

'It's a long story…' - Impression Management in South African Corporate Reporting

Master Thesis

2020

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

College of Accounting

Faculty

Faculty of Commerce

Abstract

Research in the field of impression management has presented evidence that suggests as a company's performance declines, the readability of its financial reports also declines in order to confound the user. In an attempt to determine whether similar impression management strategies are implemented amongst South African listed public companies, a mixed-effects linear regression model was applied to analyse data over the period 2016- 2018. Performance was regressed to the report readability measures over time, where readability was divided into the aspects of length (through the word count) and complexity (as quantified by the Gunning Fog Index). The findings indicate that as the financial performance of a South African company declines, the length of all its reports increases: including the annual financial statements, Integrated Report and the annual results market announcement. However, there is limited evidence of a relationship between complexity and performance. Therefore, when South African companies perform poorly, despite producing lengthier reports, the complexity therein is not impacted. These results thus caution users when faced with reports that are unusually lengthy in nature, because this trait could signal poor performance. Users are advised accordingly to critically analyse excessively lengthy reports in order to separate decision-useful information from the impression management related content elements. Lastly, this research contributes to the foundation of impression management research in the context of the South African capital market and puts forward several suggestions for important future research.

Keywords

Financial Reporting, Analysis and Governance

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