Organizational Psychological Capital During Earnings Conference Calls: Mitigating Shareholders’ Sell-Off in the Face of Earnings Surprises?

Abstract

Publicly traded firms release their earnings figures quarterly, and subsequently hold earnings conference calls where top managers can comment on firm strategy. Markets are particularly sensitive to earnings surprises, and conference calls are becoming an increasingly useful tool capable of mitigating shareholders’ negative reactions to surprises on earnings. This article argues that top managers who cue organizational-level positive psychological capital (PsyCap) are likely to mitigate investors’ reactions unanticipated changes in earnings. The developed hypotheses draw on arguments from the incremental useful information perspective, upper echelons theory, and the PsyCap literature. The analysis relies on a longitudinal data set composed of 1,920 observations including calls held for firms listed on the S&P 500 for all quarters of 2015. Computer-assisted text analysis is used to assess cues of organizational PsyCap included within each call, and event-study methodology is used to assess market performance. The findings suggest that organizational PsyCap mitigates stockholders’ negative reaction to earnings surprise, thereby indicating that psychological capital is well-perceived by investors and adds back market value for firms. A discussion of the findings and their implications for research and practice concludes the study.