Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
M. Still (1972)
The Readability of Chairmen's StatementsAccounting and Business Research, 3
J. Morton (1974)
Qualitative Objectives of Financial Accounting: A Comment on Relevance and UnderstandabilityJournal of Accounting Research, 12
A. Chambers, S. Penman (1984)
Timeliness Of Reporting And The Stock-Price Reaction To Earnings AnnouncementsJournal of Accounting Research, 22
Healy Healy (1985)
The Effect of Bonus Schemes on Accounting DecisionsJournal of Accounting and Economics, 7
Malcolm Smith, R. Taffler (1992)
Readability and Understandability: Different Measures of the Textual Complexity of Accounting NarrativeAccounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 5
K. Houghton (1988)
The measurement of meaning in accounting: A critical analysis of the principal evidenceAccounting Organizations and Society, 13
Karl Nestvold (1972)
Cloze Procedure Correlation With Perceived ReadabilityJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 49
M. Aquino (1969)
The Validity of the Miller-Coleman Readability Scale.Reading Research Quarterly, 4
N. Lewis, L. Parker, G. Pound, P. Sutcliffe (1986)
Accounting Report Readability: The Use of Readability TechniquesAccounting and Business Research, 16
J. Courtis (1986)
An Investigation into Annual Report Readability and Corporate Risk-Return RelationshipsAccounting and Business Research, 16
William Kross, Douglas Schroeder (1984)
An Empirical-Investigation Of The Effect Of Quarterly Earnings Announcement Timing On Stock ReturnsJournal of Accounting Research, 22
Healy Healy (July 1977)
Can You Understand the Footnotes to Financial Statements?Accountants Journal
Andrew Haried (1973)
Measurement of Meaning in Financial ReportsJournal of Accounting Research, 11
Adelberg (1984)
The Cloze Procedure: A Methodology for Determining the Understandability of Accounting TextbooksThe Accounting Review
Schroeder Schroeder, Gibson Gibson (December 1990)
Readability of Management's Discussion and AnalysisAccounting Horizons, 4
A. Adelberg (1979)
METHODOLOGY FOR MEASURING THE UNDERSTANDABILITY OF FINANCIAL REPORT MESSAGESJournal of Accounting Research, 17
B. Oliver (1974)
The Semantic Differential: A Device for Measuring the Interprofessional Communication of Selected Accounting ConceptsJournal of Accounting Research, 12
Smith Smith, Smith Smith (July 1971)
Readability: A Measure of the Performance of the Communication Function of Financial ReportingAccounting Review, 46
R. Taffler (1983)
The Assessment of Company Solvency and Performance using a Statistical ModelAccounting and Business Research, 13
M. Jones (1988)
A Longitudinal Study of the Readability of the Chairman's Narratives in the Corporate Reports of a UK CompanyAccounting and Business Research, 18
Watts Watts, Zimmerman Zimmerman (January 1990)
Positive Accounting Theory: A Ten Year PerspectiveThe Accounting Review, 65
Richard Morris (1987)
Signalling, Agency Theory and Accounting Policy ChoiceAccounting and Business Research, 18
W. Kwolek (1973)
A Readability Survey of Technical and Popular LiteratureJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 50
Patell Patell, Wolfson Wolfson (July 1982)
Good News, Bad News and the Intraday Timing of Corporate DisclosuresThe Accounting Review, 57
C. Bjornsson (1983)
Readability of Newspapers in 11 Languages.Reading Research Quarterly, 18
S. Pashalian, W. Crissy (1950)
How readable are corporate annual reports?The Journal of applied psychology, 34 4
Anderson (1983)
Lix & Rix: Variations on a Little-known Readability IndexJournal of Reading
W. Taylor (1953)
“Cloze Procedure”: A New Tool for Measuring ReadabilityJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 30
Stevens Stevens, Stevens Stevens, Raabe Raabe (1983)
Communication in Accounting: Readability of FASB StatementsReview of Business and Economic Research, 19
G. Miller, E. Coleman (1967)
A set of thirty-six prose passages calibrated for complexityJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6
K. Houghton (1987)
True and fair view: An empirical study of connotative meaningAccounting Organizations and Society, 12
Singhvi Singhvi, Desai Desai (January 1971)
An Empirical Analysis of the Quality of Corporate Financial DisclosureAccounting Review
Andrew Haried (1972)
The Semantic Dimensions of Financial StatementsJournal of Accounting Research, 10
A. Adelberg (1979)
Narrative Disclosures Contained in Financial Reports: Means of Communication or Manipulation?Accounting and Business Research, 9
Taffler Taffler (1983)
The Assessment of Company Solvency and Performance Using a Statistical Model: A Comparative UK Based StudyAccounting and Business Research, 15
Soper Soper, Dolphin Dolphin (April 1964)
Readability and Corporate Annual ReportsAccounting Review
John Bormuth (1968)
CLOZE TEST READABILITY: CRITERION REFERENCE SCORESJournal of Educational Measurement, 5
Houghton Houghton (November 1987a)
The Development of Meaning in Accounting: An Intertemporal StudyAccounting and Finance, 27
Abstract: Agency theory and signalling theory both suggest that firms are motivated to disclose excellence of financial performance in an unambiguous manner. We might expect, therefore, that good financial performance is associated with a clear and readable Chairman's narrative and poor performance with an obscure or misleading message. Extant work linking corporate performance with clarity of executive narrative fails to distinguish sample cases by industry or financial status. This paper seeks to overcome the consequences of such deficiencies explicitly, by conducting a systematic analysis of the relationship between narrative complexity and alternative measures of financial performance, for a matched sample of failed/non‐failed companies across common industries. This study employs separate measures of the readability and the understandability of the chairman's narrative and finds them to be significantly related to overall financial performance and individual measures of performance, most notably liquidity. Poor readability is strongly associated with poor financial performance and ease of readability with relative financial success. The implication is that firms actively signal good news while obscuring, perhaps deliberately, messages which convey bad news.
Accounting & Finance – Wiley
Published: Nov 1, 1992
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.