Jockeying for Position in CEO Letters: Impression Management and Sentiment Analytics
研究发现CEO在信函中策略性地安排正面和负面词汇的位置以影响读者感知，并提出一种位置加权情感分析方法，能更好地预测公司未来一年业绩。
Abstract This paper evidences the strategic positioning of positive and negative words within a CEO letter as a subtle form of impression management. We find that managers tend to present information in such an order that the reader of the CEO letter has a more positive perception of the underlying message. We uncover a smile in the frequency of positive words within the letter, and a half smile in the intratextual distribution of negative words, with a prevalence of negative words at the beginning of the letter. We also find a significant positive association between this qualitative impression management and the use of abnormal accruals in earnings management. We propose sentiment analytics that can compensate for the strategic management of narrative structure and find that the proposed position weighted sentiment has more predictive power for the firm performance over the next year.