Last week, ESR Jonas Röttger presented joint FINDER research at the Academy of Management Annual Conference in Seattle. The presented working paper revolves around organizations’ attempts to manage stakeholder perception by manipulating strategic announcements’ linguistic tone (sometimes referred to as sentiment). Our study on 2000 acquisition announcements revealed that firms tend to be overly optimistic in their announcements, but surprisingly investors react more negatively to positive announcements. However, this relationship hinges on other signals that help investors assess the value-creating potential of a deal, like an acquirer’s leverage and the payment method used to finance the deal. Overall, the results suggest that linguistic tone has a substantial effect on investors’ evaluation. We received valuable feedback and enjoyed the great nature around Seattle after the conference.
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