Managerial Talk Research Articles

The effect of corporate social responsibility hybridity on firm performance: moderating role of aspirational talk

PurposeThis study explores a novel conception of corporate social responsibility (CSR) hybridity and investigates its effect on returns following CSR announcements and the moderating role of aspirational CSR talk.Design/methodology/approachBased on an event study of 136 Chinese companies’ CSR announcements, this study empirically insights into an overall tension between the short-term firm performance (FP) loss and medium-term FP success of CSR hybridity.FindingsFirst, CSR hybridity has a negative impact on short-term FP. Second, although there is positive effect on medium-term FP, this influence is not permanent. Third, aspirational CSR talk has a moderating role on the positive relationship between CSR hybridity and FP. These results point to the unique features of hybridity that require time to diffuse the impacts.Originality/valueFirst, by adopting new concept of CSR hybridity, this study contributes to the literature by considering better solutions to integrate strategic CSR. Second, by investigating the complexity of the CSR hybridity–FP dialogue, the results provide insights into the questions of why and when organizations could be incentivized to adopt hybrid CSR approaches. Third, this study contributes to the CSR–FP and stakeholder literature by demonstrating that aspirational talk is key in CSR’s medium-term success. The implication of this is a growing pressure on companies’ CSR communications with investors through managerial talk that depicts organizational ambitions for CSR engagement.

Practising empty talk

This article draws on theories of normative control and critical management studies to investigate caseworkers’ strategies in correspondence to a new leadership philosophy in the Swedish Public Employment Service called self-leadership. Based on 43 interviews and observations at two local offices, we find that managerial models are arbitrary and cause uncertainty at the local level as caseworkers both comply and resist managerial talk of self-leadership. Based on a distinction between types of and grounds for strategic responses, we identify four subject positions defined as “personal embracement”, “personal detachment”, “professional recognition” and “professional dismissal”. The study shows that newly employed comply through practices of personal embracement, while senior employees resist based on professional dismissal. The article concludes that caseworkers are not docile bodies, who adjust to managerial talk, but derive their identity, engagement and esteem linked to a shared-work identity as organisational professionals. This demonstrates the relevance of closing the gap between street-level bureaucracy and critical management studies to further explore the tension between governing “employees” or “professionals” in contemporary public welfare governance.

Sustainability and technology: the contribution of “managerial talk” to the three pillars framework

PurposeThis article investigates whether accounting, a tool that affects the actions of both organisations and society, can contribute to further developing the concept of sustainability. Exploiting real-time accounts of management speeches, termed “managerial talk” in the context of this paper, the study is among the first to include technology within a sustainability framework.Design/methodology/approachA data structure with first-order and second-order categories was created using a methodology elaborated by Van Maanen (1979) and Gioia et al. (2012). The empirical data was collected during 20 presentations delivered by senior managers from companies, the financial industry, the Swedish government and non-profit organisations to the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts between November 2016 and February 2020.FindingsThe study develops an inductive model that emerges as a result of the data analysis process. It emphasises that technology can be both an enabler for, and an interference with, sustainability according to the application of steering mechanisms. The latter include governance and regulations, analysis and evaluation tools, and disclosure practice.Research limitations/implicationsAcknowledging the role of technology in sustainable development can potentially assist in the implementation of sustainability and, arguably, in fostering an alignment between the three pillars of sustainability.Originality/valueInterrelationships between sustainability, technology and accounting comprise a relatively unexplored research setting that has seldom been at the centre of academic studies.

Decoupling Under Scrutiny: Consistency of Managerial Talk and Action in the Age of Nonprofit Accountability

Decoupling theory suggests inconsistencies in what nonprofits do and what they claim to do. Accountability is a potential antidote to such inconsistencies in the nonprofit sector. To test whether different features of accountability prevent decoupling, I examine the divergence in statements about managerialism among nonprofit organizations in a major U.S. metropolitan area. The analysis compares a survey of organizations to public discourse based on five-million-word website text. Professionalism and evaluation indeed prevent organizations from embellishing their discourse. However, inconsistencies between managerial practices and managerial discourse remain frequent: Organizations continue to present symbolic displays of managerialism to the general public, particularly when their missions are tangible. Furthermore, ratings generate inconsistencies by leading organizations to downplay managerial practices. This study develops an institutional understanding of managerial talk and action, shows that the problem of decoupling in the “age of accountability” is multifaceted, and has implications for the estimation of nonprofit practices using automated text analysis.

Managerial Talk of Trust and Takeover Performance

The current study investigates the usage of virtuous language in the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section of SEC filings (10-K Form) and the prognostic power of such language for takeover performance. The sample under study, obtained from Bloomberg, is comprised of a large number of M&A deals from the United States that took place between January 2000 and October 2016. The empirical results, based on textual analysis, reveal that trust is negatively associated with long-term takeover performance, suggesting that managerial virtuous talk is, in practicality, an indication of lower post-acquisition gains for the acquirers in the long run. Furthermore, takeover returns are found to reflect textual information on trust with a delay, owing to general inattention and inability of investors to process soft cues inherent in textual content and to managers purposefully lulling investors to keep them from paying attention and identifying managerial misconduct. Quite interestingly, the significance of virtuous talk becomes more evident in the post-crisis period due to relatively higher uncertainty linked with evaluating such kind of deals on the basis of hard information alone. Finally, an inflated virtuous talk when coupled with pessimistic tone, the ability of managerial ‘good talk’ to create a trustworthy image and to distract investors reduces and the predictive power of managerial trust talk increases even more. Overall, it is concluded that managerial virtuous talk should not be regarded as a ‘cheap talk’. It is, in fact, very pertinent for predicting future takeover returns in the long run.

Exploring managerial talk through metaphor: An opportunity to bridge rigour and relevance?

In this article, we elucidate that exploring managerial talk through the lens of metaphor might offer an opportunity to bridge the often acclaimed gap between rigour and relevance in management research and education. Building on an interpretative research approach and a qualitative field study among managers from the Netherlands, Poland and the United States, we reveal that managers view their day-to-day interactions in relationships with suppliers and clients as if they perform acts, play games and fight battles. These findings corroborate extant research, but they also show that combining (a) the use of metaphor as an analytical tool with (b) a focus on managers’ perceptions of their own and others’ micro-level behaviours offers substantial potential for synthesising theory with practice. More specifically, we argue that the layered nature of metaphors – on a primary level helping us imbue meaning to raw observations, and on a theoretical level drawing our attention to potentially interesting constructs – propels confrontation and symbiosis between research and practice. Simultaneously, a focus on micro-level behaviours enhances recognisability for practitioners, while facilitating the emergence of fine-mazed patterns underlying emerging constructs on a theoretical level.

The Multiple Temporalities of Changeful Organizational Practice

The existing literature on organizational practice tends to underplay the influence of changeful agentic actions in strategic processes. Questions about how people exercise agency, and what types of actions might produce various types of result, remain significantly under-examined. Taking a discursive approach informed by Pragmatist thinking, we develop a theoretical argument that integrates managerial talk, agentic action, and temporality, and we extend this empirically by drawing on real-time talk in managers’ meetings. This paper contributes a multi-temporal perspective on organizational practice that weaves together the fleeting actions performed by managers’ talk, emergent sequences of actions, and retrospective reconstructions of the meanings of these actions.

Managerial discourses of work and eldercare: (re)producing, resisting, and negotiating boundaries between private and public

Organizations are sites of intense discursive battles between dominant discourses that reinforce existing structures and processes and emerging discourses striving for change to the status quo. This tension is particularly evident in the everyday organizational discourses about the relationship between the public and the private. Individuals balancing work and family demands, for instance, potentially engage in multiple discourses. The foundations for some of these discourses are normative and reflect the dominant views and at other times focus on change through critical and emancipatory constructions. Using a discourse analytic approach, this paper explores some of the ways in which the discourse of managers produces, re‐produces and resists traditional public/private dichotomies. More specifically, this paper considers four aspects of interview texts: (1) the discursive constructions of managerial talk that draw upon traditional, normative discourses about the separation of the public and private; (2) the discursive strategies managers use when offering advice to employees about balancing work and eldercare; (3) the discursive constructions of managers whose advice espouses organizational prescriptions for balancing work and eldercare but whose experiences reflect a more complex experience that simultaneously resists organizational prescriptions and sustains traditional understandings; and (4) discourses that resist the dominant discourses: surfacing plurivocalities in managerial discourse. Finally, the paper considers the role that managerial discourse may play in employee utilization of work–family policies.

The construction of managerial knowledge in business networks: Managers' theories about communication

In this article we regard managers' knowledge as a nuanced construction of reality that produces particular ‘espoused theories’ about the self as a practitioner and the environment in which they practice. Everyday managerial practices take place within the context of these theories. We argue that a subtle analysis of managerial talk can enhance the study of inter-firm relationships by revealing the espoused theories on the basis of which boundary spanners act. To demonstrate the construction of managers' knowledge, we introduce and explore materials collected in interviews with marketing and purchasing managers in several industrial contexts. We restrict our focus to talk about instances of communication to explore in depth how this talk establishes perceived ‘facts’ about inter-firm communicative work. We identify key discursive repertoires that are deployed to establish the range of communicative work, the difficulty in managing the directionality of communication and the complexity of managing in sometimes ambiguous situations — managerial ‘facts’ that are absent in some communication research. At the same time, discursive repertoires are deployed to establish the self as an able practitioner and a capable participant in communication. Our study has implications for boundary spanners and their organizations. We consider how boundary spanners' understandings of communication may be better deployed by the organizations that employ them and also in management education and training.

Lekking displays in contemporary organizations

The purpose of this paper is to draw on scientific models in conceptualising the evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and make cross-species comparisons, to account for male managerial activities in situ in health organizations. In the animal world, males of many species display in order to induce females to mate. Such lekking behaviour involves inter alia, strutting, puffing out, catching attention via the use of ornamental physical characteristics, exhibiting gaudily-coloured body parts, singing or splashing, and other courting and wooing strategies. The paper applies these behavioural repertoires as an explanatory device for male-dominant organizational lekking in a set of contemporary settings. It draws on six studies of managerial talk, appearance and behaviour in order to do so. Within the organizational lek male managers display mainly by power dressing, positioning, and exercising power and influence via verbal and behavioural means. Social and religious mores prohibit overt sexual coupling in organizations but lekking for other rewards is nevertheless pursued by male managers. The paper explores this managerial patterning, compares it to the lekking behaviour of other species, and discusses points of comparison and departure. It shows how male managers display within various sub-habitats, and discusses the central issues of appearance, tasks and work assignment, physical interaction structure, and talk and physiognomy. Understanding what makes people tick via deep explanations than are customarily rendered is a vital contribution of scholarship to the practical world of management. The evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and cross-species accounts, may prove useful paradigms for other theorists and empiricists in organizational studies, and could encourage the development of a new field that might be labeled evolutionary organizational behaviour.

Attracting Attention: Cheap Managerial Talk and Costly Market Monitoring

ABSTRACTWe provide a theory of informal communication—cheap talk—between firms and capital markets that incorporates the role of agency conflicts between managers and shareholders. The analysis suggests that a policy of discretionary disclosure that encourages managers to attract the market's attention when the firm is substantially undervalued can create shareholder value. The theory also relates the credibility of managerial announcements to the use of stock‐based compensation, the presence of informed trading, and the liquidity of the stock. Our results are consistent with the existence of positive announcement effects produced by apparently innocuous corporate events (e.g., stock dividends, name changes).

Playing the Game of Communication: Enhancing Skills through a Reading of Literature

Managerial communication⁄conversation in organizations is difficult to capture in its complexities. Even if attempts are made, the outcome is rarely, if ever, natural and spontaneous. How then do we proceed with an understanding of: the principles to be followed the conversational goals adhered to/violated the goals of conversationalists? A noveau approach can be to study the nuances relating to conversation by using drama as a heuristic device to gain an understanding of the complexities governing structure of communication, goals of participants, and application of conversational principles. We argue that there is little difference between simulated and naturally occurring talk in managerial situations. Researchers have been skeptical about the use of literature for an understanding of conversation in the managerial context. To validate the feasibility of our discussion, we borrow from the arguments postulated by literary critics who state that irrationalities in life can best be explored by reading of literature which paints on its canvas, life in its multiple facets. We have narrowed our focus from life to communication and have presented an understanding of managerial conversation through reading of dialogue in plays. Some researchers hold a divergent view (Mura, 1983) and argue in favour of the significance of pragmatics that is, the use of language to communicate: not the linguistic competence of the ideal speaker but the practical use of language in communication. Similarly, we extend our understanding beyond the syntactical and semantic comprehension of conversation by observing the interplay of two well-established principles of conversation: Cooperative (Grice, 1975) and Politeness (Leech, 1983). Through application of these principles to three different plays— The Zoo Story, Endgame, and The Chairs— we demonstrate how the approach can suitably be used for an understanding of managerial communication. Application of the principles to the plays reveals that: The purpose of the talk determines the adherence to or violation of the Principles. The context or situation is equally important in determining the adherence to or violation of the Principles. The “repair” mechanism always follows violation of the Principles. This mechanism ascertains that there is a need⁄desire for the conversation to proceed. In naturally occurring talk within the managerial context, the purpose for the exchange can be either task or relationship centric⁄oriented. In the former, the emphasis is on accuracy of details— the factual correctness with the right quantum of information. Maxims of politeness, in such scenarios, can be forsaken as the ultimate goal is achieving cooperation. If, on the contrary, the purpose is relationship orientation, politeness and its maxims are perforce adhered to. The strategy of “repair” is applied in instances where and when the need for exchange is higher than the desire to “save face.” As it is difficult to recreate a conversational situation, the reading of the same through plays provides great depth and insight into effective and ineffective strategies. This paper provides an alternative method of looking at managerial conversation and understanding the nuances governing talk in the organizational setup. For further understanding, managers and practitioners can: view stylistic devices as question-answer sequences, repetition, etc., in plays study the use and efficacy of stylistic devices extrapolate the findings to managerial talk devise a model for effectiveness in naturally occurring talk using managerial backdrop.

Fantasies of Leadership: Identity Work

This article explores middle managerial talk and practice connected to expectations of leadership in a planned corporate cultural change programme. Here we explore how a middle manager positions him or herself in relation to contemporary discourse on leadership. We discuss how managerial claims of leadership in practice seem inconsistent with the actual practice. Based on these findings we suggest that leadership ideas could be seen as a kind of fantasy related to identity work, rather than actual practice. We investigate this fantasy in terms of its various sources and relate the fantasy construction to management education and to the planned cultural change in particular.

Attracting Attention: Cheap Managerial Talk and Costly Market Monitoring

This paper provides a theory of informal communication (cheap talk) between firms and the capital market. The theory emphasizes the central role that agency conflicts play in firms' disclosure policies. Since managers' information is a consequence of their actions, incentive compensation and information disclosure become two intrinsically linked aspects of corporate governance. In the model, the information disclosed by managers attracts market attention and guides investors in their investigation efforts. Optimal incentive compensation, however, discourages managers from attracting market attention unless the firm is severely undervalued. The analysis relates the credibility of managerial announcements to the use of stock based compensation, the presence of informed trading, and the level of liquidity in the market. The study can also explain why apparently innocuous corporate events (e.g., a stock dividend or a name change) can affect a firm's stock price, and suggests that an adequate use of incentive compensation can foster the communication of managerial information to the market.

After the autumn harvest: rhetoric and representation in an asian industrial dispute

This paper focuses on the practice of rhetorical analysis in the analysis of managerial talk, specifically in relation to management control. Rhetoric is the means by which discursive fields are linked in specific texts to concrete social forms, with the persuasive aim of naturalizing particular preferred arrangements. With great economy, it links belief to action. When it is successful it makes a partial, ambiguous or incomplete relationship appear complete and natural by encouraging its audience to gloss over any contradictions or inconsistencies by a process of mystification. As it does so, it effaces its own working so that rhetorical artifice appears to be plain speaking, as if stating the more or less unadorned truth. Rhetorics acquire a distinctive and cohesive character according to the discursive fields which they link and become an active intervention into social and managerial power relations. Of special importance in relation to management control is the “rhetoric of bureaucratic control”. Thi...