Search results
1 – 10 of 133Fadi Alkaraan, Mohamamd Albahloul and Khaled Hussainey
Companies documents such as annual reports incorporate narratives of repetitive rhetorical strategies as effective mechanisms adopted by companies' boardrooms to promote strategic…
Abstract
Purpose
Companies documents such as annual reports incorporate narratives of repetitive rhetorical strategies as effective mechanisms adopted by companies' boardrooms to promote strategic change and strategic choices. These mechanisms can be viewed as persuasive appeals to facilitate boardrooms’ discourses. Despite the contribution of previous research through narrative analysis domains, conceptualization of narrative practices remains a relatively neglected area in the extant accounting literature.
Design/methodology/approach
The analytical framework is rooted in Aristotle's three pillars of rhetorical proofs: ethos (credibility/trustworthiness), pathos (emotion/identification through cultural domains) and logos (reason/rationale) in investigating narrative extracts regarding persuasive appeals adopted by Carillion's board through annual reports that facilitate discourse regarding Carillion’s strategic choices. Further, the authors emphasis on repetitive rhetorical slogan strategies embedded in the annual reports regarding Carillion's acquisitions strategy. We viewed acquisitions narratives as rhetorical communication artefacts and analyzed the repetitive rhetoric slogans in these corporate documents.
Findings
Findings of this study show how persuasive strategies and repetitive slogans trigger the discourses of Carillion's annual reports by drawing on perspectives from upper echelon theory, impression management and communication patterns. Findings reveal that Carillion’ board strategically use repetitive rhetoric slogans to shape optimistic corporate future performance which might be different from the feasible reality. Finally, the authors argue that corporate executives are striving to construct an alternative reality stem from their initial unrealistic aspiration to lead their sector of less controlled market share. Findings of this study have theoretical and managerial implications.
Research limitations/implications
The key limitation of this study lies with the case study as the research methodology. Subjectivity remains inherent in interpreting the findings of this study. Future studies may adopt or adapt the authors’ analytical framework to examine other domains underpinning corporate reporting practices.
Practical implications
The findings of this study have practical implications for boardrooms and policymakers. Findings of this study have theoretical and managerial implications. The level of optimism has its impact on the mood of financial decision-makers, and when there is a high level of optimism, managers may consider making more investment decisions and therefore making many acquisitions. Managerial overconfidence has been widely documented in the literature. Overconfident managers systematically overestimate the probability of good outcomes (and correspondingly underestimate the probability of bad outcomes) resulting from their actions.
Social implications
Managerial overconfidence refers to overestimation of managers' own abilities and outcomes relating to actions which are under their control. Executives believed that they have ultimate control over outcomes, which leads them to underestimate the probability of failure generally. According to self-attribution bias, many people tend to excessively credit their own skills for good results and overly credit external factors for bad outcomes.
Originality/value
The study explores the repetitive rhetorical slogan strategies embedded in the annual reports regarding Carillion's acquisitions strategy. Further, the study reveals how Carillion's board engaged through the early report with discourse and repetitive slogans to maintain their legitimacy. Findings reveal that Carillion’s board strategically uses repetitive rhetoric slogans to shape optimistic corporate future performance, which might be different from the feasible reality. Finally, the authors argue that corporate executives are striving to construct an alternative reality stem from their initial unrealistic aspiration to lead their sector of less controlled market share.
Details
Keywords
Victoria C. Edgar, Niamh M. Brennan and Sean Bradley Power
Taking a communication perspective, the paper explores management's rhetoric in profit warnings, whose sole purpose is to disclose unexpected bad news.
Abstract
Purpose
Taking a communication perspective, the paper explores management's rhetoric in profit warnings, whose sole purpose is to disclose unexpected bad news.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a close-reading approach to text analysis, the authors analyse three profit warnings of the now-collapsed Carillion, contrasting the rhetoric with contemporaneous investor conference calls to discuss the profit warnings and board minutes recording boardroom discussions of the case company's precarious financial circumstances. The analysis applies an Aristotelian framework, focussing on logos (appealing to logic and reason), ethos (appealing to authority) and pathos (appealing to emotion) to examine how Carillion's board and management used language to persuade shareholders concerning the company's adverse circumstances.
Findings
As non-routine communications, the language in profit warnings displays and mimics characteristics of routine communications by appealing primarily to logos (logic and reason). The rhetorical profiles of investor conference calls and board meeting minutes differ from profit warnings, suggesting a different version of the story behind the scenes. The authors frame the three profit warnings as representing three stages of communication as follows: denial, defiance and desperation and, for our case company, ultimately, culminating in defeat.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited to the study of profit warnings in one case company.
Originality/value
The paper views profit warnings as a communication artefact and examines the rhetoric in these corporate documents to elucidate their key features. The paper provides novel insights into the role of profit warnings as a corporate communication vehicle/genre delivering bad news.
Details
Keywords
The case uses Carillion plc, a company which focussed on providing maintenance, facilities management and energy services to buildings and large property estates, in public and…
Abstract
Research methodology
The case uses Carillion plc, a company which focussed on providing maintenance, facilities management and energy services to buildings and large property estates, in public and private sectors; infrastructure services for roads, railways and utility networks, with contracts including road and hospital construction and many strategic service contracts, e.g. free school meals. The case uses financial analysis techniques to explore whether the failure was foreseeable and questions the extent to which existing international financial reporting standards support or inhibit the decision usefulness they aspire to. The case uses only publicly available information.
Complexity academic level
This case can be used in undergraduate financial reporting and current issues in accounting courses/modules at the postgraduate level.
Details
Keywords
Andrew West and Sherrena Buckby
Recognising the growing importance of professional judgement within professional accounting, this paper examines how it relates to Aristotelian practical wisdom, with reference to…
Abstract
Purpose
Recognising the growing importance of professional judgement within professional accounting, this paper examines how it relates to Aristotelian practical wisdom, with reference to the ethical failure at Carillion plc in 2018. This includes an examination of how these concepts are similar and how they differ and a reconceptualisation of professional judgement in Aristotelian terms.
Design/methodology/approach
The conventional understanding of professional judgement is articulated with reference to accounting standards, professional accounting institutions and academic research. This is compared to Aristotelian practical wisdom, as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics. Both of these conceptualisations are analysed with reference to the failure of Carillion plc.
Findings
Some similarities as well as significant differences between the conventional conceptualisation of professional judgement and Aristotelian practical wisdom are identified. Application to the accounting failure of Carillion plc shows how an Aristotelian reconceptualisation of professional judgement, as an ethical concept, provides a more adequate understanding of unethical accounting behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis identifies aspects of professional judgement in accounting that have not previously been explored empirically, but which nevertheless have empirical support in other domains.
Practical implications
Professional judgement is reconceptualised in ethical terms, which informs how professional bodies and firms should conceive and apply this concept.
Originality/value
Although there has been research on judgement informed by psychology, there has been little research linking judgement and wisdom in an accounting context. This paper utilises a philosophically informed perspective on wisdom to reconceptualise professional judgement in a way that provides a more adequate understanding of ethical failures.
Details
Keywords
Last month Carillion, the United Kingdom’s second-largest construction and outsourcing firm, went into liquidation. It employed 43,000 people and had 2017 revenues of 5.2 billion…
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-DB230001
ISSN: 2633-304X
Keywords
Geographic
Topical
UNITED KINGDOM: Carillion spurs public-private fears
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-ES229079
ISSN: 2633-304X
Keywords
Geographic
Topical
UNITED KINGDOM: Carillion will shake up accountancy
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-ES233829
ISSN: 2633-304X
Keywords
Geographic
Topical
This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the English, Northern Irish, Arab Israeli, Trinidad and Tobago and the US cases. The focus is what we have learned from the…
Abstract
This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the English, Northern Irish, Arab Israeli, Trinidad and Tobago and the US cases. The focus is what we have learned from the research about: the relationships within Education Governance Systems to navigate turbulence; building capacity for empowering senior-level leaders to deliver on their manifestos and outstanding track records for school improvement; reducing the achievement gap between dominant groups and marginalised groups in International Governance Systems. The chapter identifies that all cases require participatory multi-stakeholder action to develop and support collaborative networked learning communities in practice. Such communities of and for practice need to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal (EYSIER). Policy and Education Governance Systems have the potential to synthesise the best of what has been said and done in the past, with innovative ways of working by empowering networks of knowledge building and advocacy. These networks co-create opportunities for action learners to work together to describe intersectionalities of discrimination and begin to remove fear of discrimination and marginalisation from Education Governance Systems. From this position, senior-level leaders can work with their leaders, teachers, parents and students to optimise how learning about the self, and learning how to learn improves community education for all students and EYSIER.
Details
Keywords
Andrew Campbell, Phil Renshaw and Staffan Engstrom
The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of strategy execution when strategy is changing.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of strategy execution when strategy is changing.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents studies of two companies – Unilever and Carillion – which appear to have found a solution to the generic problem – to understand the process of strategy execution when strategy is changing. The broader research involved examining the strategic planning processes of more than 20 large companies.
Findings
The paper gives two example solutions to a common strategy problem. The gap that often emerges between the desired strategy and the enacted strategy. The general message is that planners need to design a process that enables top managers to give strategic guidance about “grey areas” at a level of detail that matches the complexity of the products and markets in which the company competes. For many companies, this is a much lower level of detail than they are used to handling in their strategic planning processes.
Research limitations/implications
A drawback is the limited number of case studies. However, the main conclusions are tautological.
Practical implications
Top managers need to be much more involved in executing new strategies. By predicting where lower level managers are likely to lose focus, top managers can intervene to ensure that the strategy is followed through.
Social implications
There are implications for decentralisation and empowerment. Leaders need to recognise that they should intervene in some decisions some of the time in order to correct natural biases that may derail their strategic ambitions.
Originality/value
This lies in a focus on strategy execution and the role of top executives in execution.
Details
Keywords
The professional challenge the chapter addresses is Black, Asian Minority Ethnic Chief Executive Officers (BAME CEOs) who lead Multi-academy Trusts (MATs) in England need to…
Abstract
The professional challenge the chapter addresses is Black, Asian Minority Ethnic Chief Executive Officers (BAME CEOs) who lead Multi-academy Trusts (MATs) in England need to navigate turbulence to assure all schools within their MATs are high performing. In the investigation of this issue, the structures of MATs themselves emerge as causing turbulence. Evidence revealed the BAME CEOs with track records of improving failing schools to outstanding schools interviewed in this research are working in partnership with their communities. These BAME CEOs sustain their high achieving MATs and/or take on more schools that need improving and lead their change to outstanding schools with BAME communities, non-BAME communities and diverse communities. However, they were not given the opportunities to build capacity for high-performing schools by the current MAT structures. Rapid change to the organisation of Public Education Governance Systems has shifted power from local authority governance to public corporation governance without addressing any of the old problems in the change (Brighouse, 2017). The rapid change has led to a clash of cultures between those with the values of generic Public Governance Systems who have not been democratically elected by the public and do not require professional educational credentials, a track record of being ethical teachers, and a track record of leading ethical teachers in ethical communities in school improvement from ‘Needs Improvement’ to ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’. The rapid change has been hallmarked by a lack of full and free interactions and cooperation of the public in how the change in public education is being implemented. There has been no referendum on whether parents want their schools organised by their representatives they have elected in local councils or organised by public corporations financed by Private Finance Incentive (PFI) and Private Finance 2 (PF2) and operated by public corporations like Carillion.
Details