The Effect of Behavioral Strains of Managers on Optimistic Tone of Financial Reporting

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Accounting, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor of Accounting, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

3 Associate Professor Accounting, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

10.22103/jdc.2022.19273.1227

Abstract

Objective: Behavioral strains of managers, including optimism, overconfidence and short-sightedness, can overshadow their behavior and type of decisions in the organization while improving the company's financial performance. The tone of financial reporting is influenced by these behavioral characteristics.An optimistic tone in reporting is born of a kind of perceptual bias and distortion of facts that will make reporting less transparent to shareholders.When agency motives are present, the tone used by managers in explanatory reports can mislead the reader and be used strategically rather than for informational purposes.The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of managers' behavioral aspects (optimism,overconfidence andshort-sightedness) on the optimistic tone of financial reporting.
 Methods: The present research method is applied in terms of implementation result, in terms of implementation process (or data type), in terms of quantitative content analysis. In quantitative content analysis, it is mostly limited to the appearance of the text and the counting of certain words or sentences. Content analysis is the analysis of speech, writing, speeches, interviews, films, images, the way words are pronounced, the tone used in words, speeches, political announcements, and the like.The statistical sample includes 115 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2012 to 2021. To measure the optimistic tone, the vocabulary frequency method was used. In order to test the research hypotheses, the multiple regression method with combined data was used.
 
Results: The results showed that managers' optimism and overconfidence have a significant effect on the optimistic tone of financial reporting. But management short-sightedness has no effect on the optimistic tone.
 Conclusion: With the dramatic expansion of Iran's capital market in recent years, many people have been engaged in activities in this market, and many of these people are actually non-professionals, so they have less understanding about the company's explanatory reports, and on the other hand, the producers of annual reports are aware of this fact and This awareness in turn creates an incentive for producers to change their tone in order to impress them. Companies use more positive words in written messages to express a favorable image of their performance.Emerging foundations in financial economics focus on the personality traits of managers. Therefore, it is very important to know the behavioral patterns of managers. Overconfidence, optimism, and short-sightedness can be mentioned among the most important behavioral traits of managers that affect management performance and decisions, such as the tone of the board's activity report. The specific characteristics of managers beyond the specific economic factors of the companies affect the choices related to the financial reports and disclosures of the companies. Considering the existing limitations related to the choice of language and the difficulty of verifying the legitimacy of the language based on the existing facts, it seems that the tone is affected in a special way by the behavioral patterns of managers.As managers become more optimistic and confident, the optimistic tone of financial reporting increases. In other words, optimistic and confident managers use an optimistic tone in financial reporting because of their beliefs and opinions about future issues. The manager's specific optimism refers to his specific tendency to optimistically describe the company's performance in the form of an optimistic tone. Optimistic managers pay less information transparency due to their beliefs and opinions about the company's future issues. Optimistic people emphasize the use of positive words in the form of optimistic tone of financial reporting to focus on positive factors in the face of negative events.When the company has overconfident managers, the strategy of using a positive tone is more often used to mislead investors or hide bad news. Therefore, in order to realize his managerial attitude, he has an optimistic bias in providing information, which affects the quality of information and the tone of reporting.Since the behavior patterns of managers lead to their use of activities outside of accounting principles and foundations to show favorable financial performance in the short term and due to the lack of stability of this favorable financial performance in the long term, it is suggested to investors that when deciding to buy shares of the company in question, Pay special attention to its long-term financial performance.Legislators and accounting standard setters are suggested to design a specific framework for developing explanatory reports with specific words in developing new standards and laws. So that the freedom of action and authority of the management in the use of positive words in the form of unusual optimistic tone is prohibited so that the managers cannot deceive the users by using the optimistic tone opportunistically in the form of perception management.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Development and Capital
Volume 7, Issue 2 - Serial Number 13
December 2022
Pages 111-130

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History

  • Receive Date: 09 April 2022
  • Revise Date: 19 May 2022
  • Accept Date: 07 June 2022

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