Disclosure Of News Research Articles

Investigating The Impact of Physicians' Attitudes Towards Death And Their Demographic Factors On Disclosure Of Bad News To Cancer Patients

Background: This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of physicians towards death and cancer patients as well as to examine the relationship between physicians' demographic variables, their death anxiety, their attitudes and avoidance behavior towards informing patients about their diagnoses, and physicians' opinions about the necessity of education on how to approach patients with terminal illness. Methods: The study involved 90 physicians who completed a questionnaire on sociodemographic information, the Death Anxiety Scale, and a 21-item questionnaire prepared by the authors to evaluate physicians' attitudes. Results: The results showed that 87.8% of the physicians believed that patients had the right to be informed of their diagnoses and disease condition completely. However, only 52.2% of the physicians accepted that the diagnosis should be announced. Moreover, when the patient was a physician themselves with cancer, 94.4% of the physicians agreed that they prefer to be informed about the diagnosis and survival. This ratio decreased to 56.7% when the patient was a physician's relative. Additionally, 94.4% of the physicians (n=287) agreed that education on how to approach death and cancer patients should be given during or after medical education. The responses to the questionnaire differed according to the variables of death anxiety, practice area, gender, and marital status. Conclusion: According to the results, this paper shows the importance of the socio-demographic factors and the physicians attitude toward dealing with patients and giving bad news, and try to unify it by using a written training program in dealing with patients and giving bad news and reducing the effect of individual factors of physicians in dealing with Patients.

Doctors' knowledge, practices, challenges, and limitations regarding disclosure of bad news: A multicentre study from Pakistan.

Breaking bad news is one of the most difficult tasks for practicing doctors, especially for those working in health care specialties where life-threatening diseases are diagnosed and managed routinely. Our aim was to elicit the knowledge and practices of doctors and identify barriers faced by them in disclosure of bad news across the provinces of Pakistan. Cross-sectional, multi-centered study supported by an external grant in 15 Government and Private Hospitals across Pakistan. A total of 1185 doctors were surveyed. Responses were compared across provinces. 80% of doctors across all specialties considered life-threatening diagnoses like cancer and stroke as equivalent to bad news, whereas less than 50% perceived conditions like malaria and typhoid as bad news. Regarding the level of difficulty encountered in giving bad news on a scale of 0 to 6, over 57% doctors rated it 4 and above. The reasons identified were lack of confidentiality, lack of privacy, lack of time, lack of training, fear of patients' and family reactions, not wanting to hurt the patient or causing more distress, concern of having failed the patient, and their own reactions among others. Technical proficiency, training, good patient-centered communication, and incorporating socio-cultural aspects are essential for effective disclosure of bad news.

Do successive performance matter for tone management? Evidence from China

ABSTRACT This paper investigates whether managers deliberately adjust the tone of their non-financial disclosure depending on their firm performance over multiple periods. Using 13,995 firm-year MD&As (Management Discussion and Analysis) in annual reports of companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2009 to 2019, we first observe a bias towards good news disclosure by managers in their MD&A section. More importantly, we find that this asymmetric tone management is more pronounced when a firm’s performance declines consecutively. In cross-sectional tests, we provide evidence that the relationship between asymmetric tone management and successive performance is weaker for firms with state ownership and those with a high marketability index. We suggest that in non-U.S. markets, such as China, asymmetric tone management is more likely to reflect the opportunistic behaviour of managers. Overall, our study sheds new light on tone management in emerging markets and highlights the importance of a multi-period relation in understanding managers’ tone management behaviour.

Policy uncertainty, bad news disclosure, and stock price crash risk

This paper documents that economic policy uncertainty reduces future stock price crash risk by increasing firms’ disclosure of bad news. Our tests show that firms release more bad news during periods of high policy uncertainty – they use more conservatism accounting, exhibit stronger future earnings response coefficients, use more negative tones in their financial reports, and have managers that express more negative sentiment in earnings conference calls than during periods of low policy uncertainty. Additional analyses show that the negative relation between EPU and future stock price crash risk is more pronounced among firms with more short-sale constraints, with no actively traded credit default swap contracts, with lower options-implied negative skewness, or with higher firm-level political risks. The results from regressions adopting the instrumental variable approach and from a quasi-natural experiment suggest that the negative relation observed between policy uncertainty and stock price crash risk is unlikely to be driven by potential endogeneity.

Investor-Paid Credit Ratings and Managerial Information Disclosure

Unlike issuer-paid credit rating agencies (CRAs), investor-paid CRAs are compensated by investors for providing rating services. Exploiting the staggered timing of rating initiation by an investor-paid rating agency (the Egan Jones Ratings (EJR)), I document that the coverage by EJR increases rated firm managers’ voluntary disclosure of negative news. Consistent with EJR’s rating coverage deterring managerial bad news hoarding by informing investors of downside risks, I find that the effect of EJR coverage is more pronounced when issuer-paid CRAs tend to assign inflated ratings and when rated firms’ managers have a stronger incentive to conceal bad news. I also document that firms unwind upward earnings management after being covered by EJR. In contrast, coverage by an issuer-paid CRA (Standard & Poor’s) is not associated with changes in managerial information disclosure. I conclude that investor-paid CRAs function as a type of effective information intermediary to discipline firm managers and improve corporate transparency. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting. Funding: The author acknowledge financial support from the MOE Project of the Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Science in University [Grants 22JJD790093 and 22JJD790094], the Program for Innovative Research Team of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and the 111 Project [Grant B18033]. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.01914 .

Voluntary disclosures regarding open market repurchase programs

AbstractThis paper studies voluntary disclosures that firms have suspended, resumed, or completed their open market repurchase programs. Voluntary disclosures of repurchase status updates are common and value‐relevant. They also inform subsequent repurchase activities: voluntary disclosers are more likely to complete their repurchase programs and to initiate new repurchase programs than firms with undisclosed repurchase status changes. Moreover, firms that disclose repurchase suspensions experience larger returns to subsequent repurchase authorizations, consistent with a reward for establishing a reputation for transparency via voluntary bad news disclosure. Finally, exploiting a change in repurchase reporting requirements, we document that voluntary updates are less frequent when mandatory disclosure increases. An important exception, however, is when macroeconomic uncertainty is high, such as during the Great Recession and the COVID‐19 pandemic.

What accounts for the effect of sustainability engagement on stock price crash risk during the COVID-19 pandemic—Agency theory or legitimacy theory?

In this study, we conduct a textual analysis of the third-party disclosure of corporate sustainability news focused on the Standard and Poor's 500 firms in the United States market during the first and second quarter of 2020. We find a positive relationship between corporate sustainability news release and firm-specific stock price crash risk. This finding is surprising, but it indeed aligns with agency theory. It indicates that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbated the tendency of managers under increasing financial pressure to use the sustainability information release as a mechanism to mask and withhold bad news for extended periods at the expense of shareholders. This tendency results in high stock price crash risk. Our results are robust to alternative empirical specifications, estimation methods, and tests for endogeneity. Moreover, additional evidence reveals that agency theory dominates legitimacy theory in explaining the effect of sustainability on this risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Board gender reforms and voluntary disclosure: International evidence from management earnings forecasts

AbstractResearch Question/IssueThis study examines the relationship between boardroom gender diversity reforms (BGDRs) and corporate voluntary disclosure in the form of management earnings forecasts (MEFs) in a sample of 43 countries over the period 2000 to 2020.Research Findings/InsightsTaking advantage of the staggered adoption of the gender diversity reforms that aim to improve women's representation on boards, we find that firms exhibit a greater propensity for and frequency of issuing MEFs. These findings hold for both governance‐based and legislation‐based reforms but are stronger for the latter. Furthermore, we find stronger results (a) when female directors possess higher financial expertise and serve on board sub‐committees, (b) when board activity (meetings and attendance) improved following BGDRs, (c) for firms that had all‐male boards before the reforms and where gender diversity increased shortly after the reforms, and (d) for countries with greater legal enforcement and gender equality. Our findings are robust using the stacked difference‐in‐differences approach and alternative samples, models, and fixed effects. In addition, we find that, after the reforms, there is an increase in the forecast horizon, forecast width, bad news disclosure, accuracy, and the number of disaggregated forecast items.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsOur study provides the first international and comprehensive evidence of the positive role of board gender reforms in the corporate information environment and offers vital policy implications.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur study informs the ongoing debate regarding the effectiveness of and business case for gender diversity reforms. By documenting a causal link between BGDRs and voluntary disclosure, our study provides important implications for policymakers, regulators, investors, and top management teams.

Does negative news disclosure induce better decision‐making? Evidence from acquisitions

AbstractWe examine the effect of negative news disclosures on acquisition decisions of firms. Using textual analysis of company press releases, we find that the percentage of negative news disclosed by a firm reduces its probability of acquisitions. However, for firms that do undertake acquisitions, the percentage of negative news disclosed is positively related to announcement‐period abnormal returns. Consistent with theoretical predictions, this positive relationship is more pronounced for acquirers with low pay‐performance sensitivity and those operating in concentrated industries. Overall, our results suggest that when managerial reputation concerns are high following negative news development, they make more prudent acquisition decisions.

ESG news, stock volatility and tactical disclosure

Against the backdrop of the increasing importance of ESG investing, our goal is to explore whether ESG-related disclosure timing is tactically managed by listed companies. An international comparison is undertaken on a sample of 199 blue-chips listed firms, located in Europe, Usa and Asia. Using a dataset of 29.724 ESG news over a period of 6 years (2015–2020), we evaluate the disclosure determinants using a Probit model. We find that the probability of negative ESG news disclosure is lower when the stock is experiencing higher returns volatility. This evidence suggests that managers refrain from fuelling market instability and eroding firm’s reputation capital with the disclosure of bad ESG news, adopting a type of hoarding behaviour. Similarly, managers tend to boost positive ESG-related information when the returns volatility is higher, even though the evidence is milder than for bad news. Our findings highlight that the degree of transparency on ESG matters remains incomplete and there are spaces for tactical disclosure. Concerned investors should be aware that their information on sustainability matters might be biased, especially in times of higher volatility.

Training first-year medical residents to break bad news using healthcare role-play and trainees as simulated patients: Experience of the “ADIAMED” program from Lille University School of Medicine

IntroductionSeveral studies suggest the relevance of healthcare simulation to prepare future doctors to deliver bad news. A such, we designed a role-play workshop to train first-year residents enrolled in Lille University School of Medicine to break bad news. The objective of this work is to report on our experience of this training and to assess its educational value through its capacity to satisfy residents’ expectations, to induce a feeling of ease towards bad news disclosure, and to change trainees’ preconceptions regarding these situations. MethodsThe training consisted of a 45-minute heuristic reflective activity, aimed at identifying residents’ preconceptions regarding bad news disclosure, followed by 4 30-min role-plays in which they played the parts of the physician, the patient and/or their relatives. Trainees were asked to answer 2 questionnaires (pre- and post-training), exploring previous experiences, preconceived ideas regarding bad news disclosure and workshop satisfaction. ResultsAlmost all residents felt very satisfied with the workshop, which they regarded as formative (91%) and not too stressful (89%). The majority felt “more capable” (53% vs. 83%) and “more comfortable” (27% vs. 62%) to deliver bad news, especially regarding “finding the right words” (12% vs. 22%). Trainees tended to overestimate their skills before the workshop and lowered their assessment of their performance after attending the training, especially when they played the role of a patient in the simulation. ConclusionHealthcare role-play seems an interesting technique for training to breaking bad news. Placing residents in the role of patients or relatives is an active approach that encourages reflexivity.

A Novel Ensemble Learning Approach for Stock Market Prediction Based on Sentiment Analysis and the Sliding Window Method

Financial news disclosures provide valuable information for traders and investors while making stock market investment decisions. Essential but challenging, the stock market prediction problem has attracted significant attention from both researchers and practitioners. Conventional machine learning models often fail to interpret the content of financial news due to the complexity and ambiguity of natural language used in the news. Inspired by the success of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) in sequential data processing, we propose an ensemble RNN approach (long short-term memory, gated recurrent unit, and SimpleRNN) to predict stock market movements. To avoid extracting tens of thousands of features using traditional natural language processing methods, we apply sentiment analysis and the sliding window method to extract only the most representative features. Our experimental results confirm the effectiveness of these two methods for feature extraction and show that the proposed ensemble approach is able to outperform other models under comparison.

Judicial independence and crash risk: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

This paper examines the impact of judicial independence on stock price crash risk. Employing the establishment of circuit tribunals in China as a shock to judicial independence and a difference-in-differences design, I find that increased judicial independence is associated with lower stock price crash risk. Further analysis suggests that timely disclosure of bad news is a potential mechanism through which judicial independence affects stock price crash risk. Cross-sectional tests indicate that the negative relationship between judicial independence and crash risk is more pronounced for firms located in areas with higher levels of local protectionism, firms with a stronger incentive to hoard more bad news, and firms with weaker external monitoring prior to the circuit tribunal implementation. Taken together, my findings suggest that judicial independence plays a disciplinary role in mitigating firms' bad-news-hoarding activities.

Use of Simulation-Based Mastery Learning Curriculum to Improve Difficult Conversation Skills Among Anesthesiologists: A Pilot Study.

Breaking bad news (BBN) is an important clinical task for physicians. Unfortunately, there is no standard method to teach and assess these skills of anesthesiologists. Although anesthesiology has become a relatively safe medical specialty, complications still occur that require disclosure to patients and their families. Disclosure of bad news can be a significant source of stress for clinicians, especially for those who have low confidence in their BBN skills. Anesthesiologists' skills in BBN can be improved with simulation-based mastery learning (SBML), an intense form of competency-based learning. An SBML curriculum was developed using the SPIKES (Situation, Perception, Invitation, Knowledge, Emotion, Summarize) framework for BBN and the NURSE (Naming, Understanding, Respecting, Supporting, Exploring) statements for expressing empathy. A pretest-posttest study was conducted from March 2020 to June 2022 to evaluate anesthesiologists' performance in BBN. Participants completed a 2-hour curriculum consisting of a pretest, didactic session, deliberate practice with feedback, and a posttest. Anesthesiologists were assessed using a 16-item skills checklist. Six anesthesiology attendings and 14 anesthesiology fellows were enrolled in the study. Three of 20 participants met the minimum passing score (MPS) at the time of their pretest. All study participants met the MPS on their first posttest (P < .001). The median participant confidence in BBN significantly increased (3 to 4, P < .001). Overall course satisfaction in the curriculum was high, with a median score of 5. Our study demonstrates that a BBN SBML curriculum for anesthesiologists significantly improved communication skills and confidence in a simulated environment. Because only 3 participants met the MPS before training, our results suggest that anesthesiologists could benefit from further education to gain effective communication skills and that SBML training may be effective to achieve this result.

The role of family and culture in the disclosure of bad news: A multicentre cross-sectional study in Pakistan

ObjectivesDisclosure of bad news is distressing for patients and family members. Our aim was to assess patients' perceptions and preferences regarding bad news in the health setting. MethodsCross-sectional, multi-centered study supported by an external grant in 15 Government and Private Hospitals across Pakistan. A sample size of 1673 patients and family members was used. Ethics permission/consent was taken from each participating hospital and participant. Responses were compared across provinces, gender, age, education and income. Results>80% patients preferred their relatives to know the diagnosis first and they wanted the news to be disclosed to them by doctors. Significant association between education level, income and preference for wanting to know the diagnosis was found. Reasons for wanting to know the diagnosis included treatment, prognosis and prevention options whereas reasons for not wanting to know included fear of emotions and God's will. ConclusionThe majority of Pakistani patients want to be informed and want the family to know first. Preferences for disclosure vary across, age, education and income level. InnovationFirst countrywide study on this topic. Identifies need for culturally sensitive guidelines that include the family's role in disclosure of bad news.

Economic effects of litigation risk on corporate disclosure and innovation

Empirical studies on the relationship between shareholder litigation and corporate disclosure obtain mixed results. We develop an economic model to capture the endogeneity between disclosure and litigation. Equilibrium disclosure is determined by two countervailing effects of litigation, a deterrence effect and an insurance effect. We derive four key results. (i) Decreasing litigation risk leads to less disclosure of very bad news, due to a weakening of the deterrence effect, but to more disclosure of weakly bad news, due to a weakening of the insurance effect. (ii) Given a sufficiently large information asymmetry, litigation risk dampens (boosts) overall disclosure of bad news for low (high) litigation risk firms. (iii) Capital markets respond more to the disclosure of bad news than of good news if the deterrence effect is strong, which arises if both insiders’ penalties and litigation risk are high. (iv) In an extension, we highlight real effects of litigation on corporate innovation and establish that innovation first decreases and then increases (strictly decreases) with litigation risk if insiders’ penalties are small (large). We reconcile our findings with results from a large set of U.S.-based empirical studies and make several novel predictions.

The impact of ESG news on the volatility of the Portuguese stock market—Does it change during recessions?

AbstractThis paper assesses how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) news influence Portuguese stock market volatility depending on the business cycle. Given the lack of an adequate index to capture the effects of ESG media on the Portuguese stock market, a News Sentiment Index is developed. This index, which captures positive and negative ESG news on companies listed in the Portuguese Stock Index (PSI‐20), is then used as an external regressor in symmetric and asymmetric GARCH‐type models employed to model the stock market volatility. Results show that during non‐crisis periods ESG news reduce returns' volatility, and that when considering the period preceding the financial crisis the disclosure content (positive or negative) of the news matter. However, during economic downturns, neither the amount nor the content disclosure of ESG news affect volatility; thus, ESG preoccupations might no longer be paramount.

Corporate News Disclosure and Competitive Advantage: What Factors Influence on S&amp;P 500 Companies’ Competitive Advantage During 2022 Economic Crisis?

This paper aims to explore corporate news related to the topic of the competitive advantage of S&amp;P 500 companies in the period of the economic crisis in 2022. The observed companies are the biggest US companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The computerized qualitative analyses were done on 200 corporate news from January 2022 until November 2022, with 13,361 pages and 5,294,836 words. The research results prove that the US biggest companies disclosure intensively in public about their competitive advantage with 90.29% including text samples from initial corpus text. The companies disclosure about 4 main topics (factors) during this year’s crisis: (1) profitability; (2) financial market performance; (3) products and services; (4) top management leadership. The research article contributes to the current literature on competitive advantage narratives, how the biggest companies tend to achieve competitive advantage during the economic crisis and address messages to their stakeholders. These messages could be of the highest importance mostly because of existing uncertainties and high levels of risks.

Effect of geomagnetic activity on investors and managers: evidence from the pricing and timing of disclosure of earnings news

PurposeThis paper's purpose was to examine the impact of geomagnetic activity (GMA) on the timing and valuation of earnings information disclosed by firms every quarter.Design/methodology/approachThe authors start the analyses with a sample of 112,669 client firms from 1989 to 2018. To analyze the impact of GMA on the earnings response coefficient (ERC), the authors use the three-day cumulative abnormal returns and cumulative abnormal returns for the extended post-earnings announcement window [2, 75] as the dependent variables. The authors interact unexpected earnings (UE) with the C9 Index, an index commonly used to measure GMA and study how GMA affects the pricing of new public information. To examine the effect of GMA on the timing of disclosure of earnings news, the authors regress a variant of the GMA index on the propensity to disclose bad earnings news.FindingsThe authors find significantly lower earnings response coefficients during periods of high GMA. This effect is permanent and stock prices do not correctly incorporate the implications of earnings information over time. The authors also show that managerial behavior is affected by GMA as well and the managers are more (less) likely to release bad (good) news during periods of higher activity. Finally, the authors also find that in situations where stakeholders are likely to rely on modern technology that depends minimally on humans, the adverse impact of GMA on the pricing of earnings information is mitigated.Originality/valueThe literature on the effect of GMA on the capital market is very limited and focuses primarily on stock returns, while the behavioral finance literature focuses on circumstances like weather, temperature and sporting outcome to study how the investors' mood affects their capital market behavior. The authors add to both the literature by investigating how GMA influences investors' and managers' behaviors in the capital market.

COVID-19 pandemic experiences, ethical conflict and decision-making process in critical care professionals (Quali-Ethics-COVID-19 research part 1): An international qualitative study.

The aim of this study was to explore the sources of ethical conflict and the decision-making processes of ICU nurses and physicians during the first and subsequent waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Depside several studies exploring ethical conflicts during COVID-19 pandemic, few studies have explored in depth the perceptions and experiences of critical care professionals regarding these conflicts, the decision-making process or which have analysed the complexity of actually implementing the recommendations of scientific societies and professional/healthcare institutions in interdisciplinary samples. A descriptive phenomenological study. Thirty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted with critical care nurses and physicians from five hospitals in Spain and Italy between December 2020 and May 2021. A thematic content analysis of the interview transcripts was conducted by two researchers. Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) were employed to ensure the quality and transparency of this study. Two main themes emerged as sources of ethical conflict: the approach to end of life in exceptional circumstances and the lack of humanisation and care resources. The former comprised two subthemes: end-of-life care and withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment; the latter comprised three subthemes: the impossibility of guaranteeing the same opportunities to all, fear of contagion as a barrier to taking decisions and the need to humanise care. Professionals sought to take their decisions in line with professional ethics and bioethical principles, but, nevertheless, they experienced moral dilemmas and moral distress when not being able to care for, or to treat, their patients as they believed fit. Further education and training are recommended on the provision of end-of-life and post-mortem care, effective communication techniques via video calls, disclosure of bad news and bioethical models for decision-making in highly demanding situations of uncertainty, such as those experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.