Salient Expectations? Incongruence across Capability and Integrity Signals and Investor Reactions to Organizational Misconduct
研究投资者如何应对企业能力信号（如联盟公告）与诚信信号（如财务重述）之间的不一致，发现突出的能力信号会加剧投资者对不当行为的负面反应。
Research in signaling theory has recently begun to explore how audiences process signal sets and the incongruence across the signals within. However, prior studies have assumed homogenous compositions of signal sets, and thus unidimensional signal incongruence, although social evaluations tend to involve simultaneous processing of different dimensions. In this study, we examine audiences’ responses to the interdimensional incongruence between capability and integrity signals, particularly by focusing on how the salience of positive capability signals aggravates investor reactions to organizational misconduct, a negative integrity signal. Using irregular financial restatements as the negative integrity signals and prior alliance announcements as the positive capability signals, we find that investors react more negatively to restatements by firms whose alliance announcements are more salient—that is, the firms that announce more frequently and firms that create more positive expectations from those announcements. We also find that firm size and level of diversification weaken these negative effects. We contribute to research on signaling theory, social evaluations, organizational misconduct, and alliances.