Developments in content analysis: a transitivity index andDICTIONscores

Abstract

This paper responds to a call in the literature for methodological and empirical studies to advance research into accounting narratives, in the light of acknowledged areas of weakness and gaps in the accounting literature and with a view to investigating impression management. A general line of critique in the accounting literature points to a need to expand both the syntactic and thematic dimensions, with a particular focus on developing objective methods of analysis that allow computer‐based measurement. The paper draws on the literature of managerial business communications, supported by that of applied linguistics, in bringing to accounting research a transitivity index and the application of DICTION analysis. Both have the potential to extend computer‐based analysis of accounting narratives, subject to careful initial research design and specification. The potential for a richer empirical analysis is demonstrated through an illustrative empirical application.

Impression Management and Organizational Audiences: The Fiat Group Case

“…Prior studies have documented the presence of certain language characteristics (Smith and Taffler, 2000;Sydserff and Weetman, 2002) or the effective use of verbal tone and language bias (Aerts, 1994;Cho et al, 2010; in corporate narratives. In fact, Cho et al (2010) argue that "the more firm performance differs from a desired benchmark, the more management is motivated to manage impressions, and the more likely it is that narrative disclosure will be affected by a self-serving bias" (p. 432).…”

Tone disclosure and financial performance: evidence from Egypt

“…Prior research identifies that the writing style adopted by firms in the chairman's statement is contingent on FP. For instance, Sydserff and Weetman (2002) found that the narratives of firms experiencing poor FP are written in a style which detaches the reader from the message.…”

Impression Management: Developing and Illustrating a Scheme of Analysis for Narrative Disclosures - A Methodological Note

“…The latter four methods are applied in this paper. Sydserff and Weetman (2002) is difficult to classify as it uses three methods: one reading ease manipulation and two rhetorical manipulation. 3 Ingram and Frazier (1980) is a corporate social reporting study.…”

“…To date, form-oriented content analysis studies investigating impression management have been relatively simplistic, for example, using word counts (Clatworthy and Jones, 2003), number of sentences (Kohut and Segars, 1992), coding of certain words (Sydserff and Weetman, 2002 …”