Corporate speeches as a source of corporate values: An analysis across years, themes, and industries

The Promise of a Managerial Values Approach to Corporate Philanthropy

“…For example, while managerial values are perhaps the most difficult to measure directly (Hambrick and Mason, 1984), some background characteristics of top managers, such as socioeconomic background and religious beliefs (Weaver and Agle, 2002), may serve as possible proxies. Or, it may be The Promise of a Managerial Values Approach to Corporate Philanthropy possible to indirectly measure top managers' values by examining their communications, such as speeches delivered to stakeholders (Sussman et al, 1983). Moreover, since we argue for causal effects of managerial values on corporate philanthropy and corporate financial performance, future empirical studies that are able to clearly demonstrate causality, for example, through collecting longitudinal data and designing appropriate methods that effectively control for alternative explanations, would be most desirable.…”

Self‐serving attributions, managerial cognition, and company performance

“…A number of studies have examined executives' statements in annual reports as clues to their understanding of the ways external events and their own actions affect company performance (Bowman, 1976(Bowman, , 1978(Bowman, , 1984Bettman and Weitz, 1983; Salancik and Meindl, 1984;Staw, Mc-Kechnie and Puffer, 1983). Others (Huff and Schwenk, 1985;Sussman, Ricchio and Belohlav, 1983) have used speeches by top executives to provide data on their perception and understanding of environmental events. Statements by management, in annual reports and elsewhere, provide some of the best data on the cognitive aspects of strategic management.…”

From Actions to Impressions: Cognitive Attribution Theory and the Formation of Corporate Reputation

“…Much research has been conducted on selfserving attributions in the communication of corporate performance in annual reports (Bowman, 1976;Bettman and Weitz, 1983;Staw et al, 1983;Salancik and Meindl, 1984;Clapham and Schwenk, 1991) and in the public speeches of corporate managers (Sussman et al, 1983;Huff and Schwenk, 1985). The common finding is that corporate communications have the tendency to attribute a corporation's favorable performance to factors internal to the firm and its unfavorable performance to factors external to the firm.…”