Impression Management in Polish Letters to Shareholders

Motivated by continued interest in the fairness and reliability of financial disclosures, we study the use of impression management in the letters to shareholders of stock-exchange listed companies written in the Polish language. The letters are a succinct form of narrative communication, easily accessible to professionals and individual investors alike, which makes them an important element of the market information environment. However, letters can be used to signal key information regarding the issuing company, or they can be used to obfuscate and bias the information contained in financial statements. We study the letters of Polish companies from 2008 and 2013 to determine how impression management develops over time and to find out what patterns exist in the use of impression management. We find that agency theory explanations dominate, but there is a significant increase in the use of impression management between the years studied.