【讲座时间】2023年7月25日  10:00

【讲座地点】BV韦德106室

【讲座主题】PROFANITY AND THE COMPANY-INVESTOR RELATIONSHIP

【嘉宾介绍】于瑶，大学会计学助理教授

Dr. Yao Yu is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass Amherst). She received her Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University and her B.B.A. from Xiamen University. Her primary research interests lie in the area of judgment and decision-making in the corporate disclosure and auditing contexts. She has taught financial accounting in the undergraduate and graduate programs at UMass Amherst. Her research has been published in leading journals, including The Accounting Review and Contemporary Accounting Research. She has been serving on the editorial board of Behavioral Research in Accounting since 2020 and has served as an ad hoc reviewer for top journals including Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting, Organization and Society, Accounting Horizons, and European Accounting Review.

【内容提要】

Despite the growing prevalence of using profanity in business settings, the literature has been relatively silent on the effects of profane language on investors. Additionally, current trends suggest that investors increasingly rely on factors other than expected returns when deciding between potential investments (Gallup 2022). Specifically, many investors are deciding to invest in companies that they are passionate about, identify with, admire, and/or with whom they share similar values. In this study, we examine how a CEO’s use of profanity in an earnings conference call causes investors to place more weight on their perceived relationship (exchange versus communal) with the company in making investment decisions. Using a laboratory experiment with graduate business students assuming the role of current investors participating in an earnings conference call, we predict and find that when a CEO’s responses to analysts’ questions contained profanity, investment willingness is higher for investors that hold a communal (versus exchange) relationship with the company. We find no effect of relationship on investment willingness in the absence of profanity. We further find that investors’ perceived closeness with the company mediates the interaction between relationship and profanity on investment willingness.