사업보고서 가독성과 경영자 잠정실적공시 간의 관계 (Annual Report Readability and Disclosure of Preliminary Earnings)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계저널 / 31권 / 4호 / 33 ~ 71페이지
· 저자명 : 김현정, 이승재

초록

본 연구는 우리말 사업보고서의 가독성이 잠정실적공시 가능성과 공시 오차 및 편의에 미치는 영향을 검증하였다. 난독화 이론에 따르면, 경영자는 부정적인 회계정보가 주가에 반영되는 속도를 늦추기 위해 사업보고서의 가독성을 조절할 수 있다. 가독성이 낮은 사업보고서를 공시하는 경영자는 실적에 대한 예상정보가 시장에 반영되는 것을 촉진하거나 늦추기 위해 잠정실적을 공시할 것이다. 사업보고서의 전체 길이, 단어 길이, 문장 길이, 단어의 복잡성 등을 이용하여 세 가지 방법으로 사업보고서의 가독성을 측정 및 분석한 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 사업보고서의 가독성이 낮을수록 경영자가 잠정실적공시를 할 가능성이 높아졌다. 이와 더불어 사업보고서의 가독성이 낮을수록 잠정실적공시의 오차가 증가하였으며, 이러한 상관관계는 낙관적으로 성과를 예측한 표본에서 더욱 두드러지는 것을 확인하였다. 이는 가독성이 낮은 사업보고서를 공시하는 경영자는 기회주의적으로 잠정실적공시를 수행할 가능성이 존재하며, 낙관적인 실적 공시를 통해 부정적 성과를 숨기고자 하는 경영자의 의도가 공시전략에 반영되는 것을 의미한다. 본 연구는 언어적 특성이 회계정보의 질적 속성과 관련되어 있다는 선행연구를 확장하여 경영자는 회계정보의 적시성을 조절하기 위해 우리말 사업보고 서의 언어적 특성을 활용한다는 실증증거를 제시했다는 데에 의의가 있다.

영어초록

This paper investigates how the readability of annual reports affects the manager’s timely disclosure decisions. The manager’s intention would be reflected in the linguistic characteristics of the annual reports since they are prepared according to a regulated format(Lee 2017). So, it is important to understand the language characteristics which are contained in the reports. Information in poorly readable annual reports is less likely to be reflected in stock prices as investors might less use the information due to high information processing costs. According to previous studies on annual report readability, as the earnings quality is lower, managers with an opportunistic purpose disclose unreadable annual reports(Jung et al. 2018). According to the obfuscation theory, managers would control the readability of annual reports to make unfavorable accounting information slowly reflected in the stock price. Managers who disclose unreadable annual reports will disclose preliminary earnings to facilitate the reflection of favorable information on price. Opportunistic managers can use disclosure of preliminary earnings to offset negative accounting information contained in annual reports. Disclosure of preliminary earnings serves to assist market investors in their decision-making by providing performance information before the publication of annual reports(Sohn and Lee 2005; Baik et al. 2012). However, since the preliminary earnings are subject to change in the future with the settlement of accounts not finalized, there would be a room for misuse depending on the opportunistic purpose of management(Lee et al. 2011; Kim 2018b). According to the empirical analysis results, it can be seen that managers establish a disclosure strategy that uses the accuracy of preliminary earnings or timing of announcing them to highlight positive news and hide negative news(Kim 2018a; Kim 2018b). Managers who disclose unreadable annual reports because they want information on future performance to be reflected in the market price slowly, would hide actual performance through non regular disclosures and send positive signals to the market by disclosing optimistic information. Therefore, this study analyzes the relation between the readability of annual reports and the disclosure of preliminary earnings to verify whether the manager’s intention to reduce the timeliness of negative accounting information through annual reports is reflected in disclosure of preliminary earnings. Proxying for annual report readability using the Flesch ease index, Fog index, and the length of the reports which are commonly used in accounting literature, we found that managers who disclose unreadable annual reports are more likely to disclose preliminary earnings. It is interpreted that managers slow down the rate at which negative accounting information is reflected in stock prices by disclosing unreadable annual reports, and make preliminary earnings disclosures to deliver a positive signal to the market. Second, it was found that firms disclosing annual reports with low readability have a large error in the disclosure of preliminary earnings, and the bias of disclosed preliminary earnings is also large. In particular, the relation between the readability of the annual report and the bias of preliminary earnings is strong in the sample that discloses upward biased preliminary earnings. These results mean that managers who disclose unreadable annual reports are likely to disclose preliminary earnings opportunistically, and the managers’ intention to hide negative accounting information through optimistic performance disclosure is reflected in the disclosure strategy. This study is meaningful in that it verified that the linguistic characteristics of annual reports are related to non regular disclosure strategies by expanding previous studies that the qualitative attributes of accounting information affect the linguistic characteristics of annual reports. The manager’s intention is reflected in the linguistic characteristics of the annual report, and these managers control the reflection of accounting information in the stock price by strategically using the preliminary earnings disclosure. In addition, this study expanded prior research on disclosure by verifying that managers’ intentions are reflected in non regular disclosure as well as regular.

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