Impression management in bilingual corporate reporting: An analysis of textual characteristics in Spanish and English

Abstract

Globalization has made it more important for companies to communicate in different languages. However, translation in financial reporting is neglected in practice, despite offering managers the potential to increase/decrease opportunistic attitudes in different languages. In particular, opposing pressure and monitoring effects would suggest higher/lower incentives for impression management. This paper investigates whether there are different levels of impression management in different versions of bilingual (Spanish/English) annual reports produced by Spanish listed companies. Patterns in textual characteristics that may be used for impression management purposes are analyzed. Despite different incentives, the results show little difference in the opportunistic use (or lack thereof) of every textual variable analyzed between the different language versions. This implies that stakeholders may feel free to read the bilingual reports in the language in which they feel most comfortable, because the translation process does not seem to result in different levels of impression management.