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The use of social networking websites by companies to disclose corporate news and by investors to collect information for investment purposes is increasing rapidly. However, the role of investors’ affective reactions to corporate disclosures on social networking websites is under-researched. This paper aims to examine how the disclosure platform (disclosing news on a company’s Facebook Web page or the corporate investor relations Web page) and news valence (positive or negative) jointly influence investors’ affective reactions to corporate news and stock price change judgments.

The authors conduct an experimental study using 364 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website as a proxy for reasonably informed investors.

Results show that the disclosure platform influences investors’ affective reactions and stock price change judgments when the corporate news is negative, but not when the corporate news is positive. In addition, investors’ affective reactions mediate the influence of the disclosure platform on investors’ stock price change judgments when the corporate news is negative rather than positive.

This paper extends the theory on affective reactions to a social networking context by showing that differences in disclosure platforms and news valence influence investors’ affective reactions to corporate news. In addition, the study’s theory and findings have significant implications for researchers, company managers and public relations specialists, capital market participants, regulators and investor education organizations and users of social networking websites.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether companies recognised for the quality of their sustainability reporting are also adopting investor relations (IR) best practices for their IR webpages. Quality communications to all stakeholder groups may then speak to organisational transparency and integrated corporate communication management (CCM).

An ordinary least squares regression model was developed to test the hypothesis that companies with quality sustainability reporting also adopts best practices in online IR. Sustainability reporting quality was signalled by inclusion of the company in a socially responsible investment (SRI) index. IR quality was proxied by disclosure scores compiled from content analyses of investor relations webpages.

This study find that inclusion in the SRI Index was positively and significantly associated with online IR quality, while controlling for other variables associated with voluntary disclosure behaviour.

For retail and institutional investors in SRI Index companies, cost of information discovery is reduced as they can use the investor relations webpages as comprehensive source.

This study contributes to the literature on corporate transparency by operationalising reporting “transparency” in that it considers the combined communications output to both financial and non-financial stakeholder groupings. A 2 × 2 conceptual framework for corporate disclosures is proposed that reconciles legitimacy theory and voluntary disclosure theory as motivations. It also contributes to the paucity of research on the links between public relations and investor relations in corporate communications by demonstrating a joint contribution to transparency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the level of investor relations and cost of capital of Japanese electric appliance firms.

A two‐step estimation procedure is used to estimate a regression model of a firm's information asymmetry component of cost of capital on the level of investor relations and other firm characteristics in order to control for self‐selection bias.

As expected, a negative link between the level of investor relations and cost of capital is documented after controlling for self‐selection bias, firm characteristics, and additional robustness check.

The result of the paper is based on a sample of listed Japanese electric appliance firms, and thus may not be generalized to other industries or institutional settings. Total spread, which consists of information cost, inventory holding cost, and other processing cost component, might produce measurement errors and thus bias against the results. Further researchers should endeavor to isolate information cost component from total spread.

Involving in investor relations' activities to reduce information asymmetries ultimately narrows bid‐ask spread, and thus reduces cost of capital. An important implication, therefore, is that managers should treat any market participants equally by communicating to a broad spectrum of investor communities via investor relations.

The current paper contributes to the literature by modeling and explicitly controlling for self‐selection bias and being the first study to investigate the association between investor relations and cost of capital for Japanese firms.

This paper aims to systematically review how corporations are increasingly using social media to strategically disseminate information to investors, including different research tracks, then identify the gaps to propose future research opportunities.

The authors searched for relevant scholarly work on Scopus and Google Scholar databases published during the period 2000–2020 in English. Both quantitative and qualitative papers were reviewed. Articles were filtered based on their relevance to the study's goal, resulting in the selection of 84 articles. A total of 16 articles were selected for inclusion in the systematic review.

In light of the existing studies’ limitations, this paper derives and summarizes 16 leading future research tracks. Results indicated that corporations could use social media to reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors. Nevertheless, social media for information disclosure purposes is used in a strategic way, whereby only positive news and voluntary information are disseminated.

The implications for investors are that they can make better decisions by engaging in the process of “the wisdom of crowd,” which is facilitated by reciprocal communication. The implications for corporations are that sharing earning information through social networking platforms presents them with an opportunity to effectively manage their investors by reducing negative perceptions and increasing market response.

As far as we know, this is the first paper that uses a systematic literature review over the social media research field.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a synthesis for investor relations (IR) research on how to understand, conceptualize and build trust relationships between companies and the financial community within the practice of IR. In doing so, a working definition of the role of trust for IR, a conceptual model as well as strategies on how to establish, maintain and foster trust relationships within IR are proposed. Furthermore, a brief research alley is sketched to inspire more corporate communication scholars to conduct empirical studies in this field of research.

The paper is based on a thorough literature review on empirical and theoretical work in the field of IR, strategic financial communication as well as related disciplines such as public relations, marketing and business research. Furthermore, the literature from other disciplines dealing with trust in the organizational context (economics, psychology, sociology) has been reviewed to develop a working definition for the role of trust in IR.

The following supposition for the role of trust in IR has been worked out: “Trust relationships within investor relations manifest themselves on a micro-, meso-, and macro-level and involve interactions with various individual actors, groups of people, organizations, institutions, and systems. Within these trust interactions, investor relations presents itself simultaneously three-fold: as a discipline, an organization and as individual practitioners.”

To support the establishment, maintenance and fostering of trust relationships, IR needs to provide honest, transparent, comprehensive and coherent information to be in continuous, direct and mutual contact with stakeholders (e.g. investors, analysts, CEOs) and to endeavor a fair representation of the company in the media and among the public.

Facing recent changes in the media, regulatory and corporate environment, this conceptual paper provides a thorough discussion of the role of trust in the field of IR. The working definition, the conceptual model as well as the practical strategies to build trust relationships provided in this paper might help IR to overcome these challenges. The call for more research in this area and the actual employment of the suggested trust building strategies might contribute to fostering trust relationships in the financial markets, thereby contributing to a more sustainable financial system in the long run.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether financial analysts mislead investors in recognizing the differential persistence of the three cash flow components of earnings, defined by Dechow et al., in forecasting annual earnings.

The paper uses Mishkin's econometric approach to compare the persistence of the cash flow components within and across the historical, analysts' and investors' weightings.

It is found that financial analysts' weightings of the cash flow components are more closely aligned with the historical relations than are investors' weightings, both in direction and in magnitude. The degree of analysts' mis‐weighting is economically small and much lower than the degree of investors' mis‐weighting. Moreover, the extent of both investors' and analysts' mis‐weightings of the cash components is generally smaller for firms with greater levels of analyst following, a proxy for the quality of the information environment.

The findings suggest that financial analysts' bias in weighting the cash components of earnings is at best a partial explanation for investors' bias.

This study is important to academics and the investment community that relies upon financial analysts as information intermediaries, because the ability of analysts to incorporate value‐relevant information in their published expectations may impact securities prices.

The study is the first to document the weightings of the cash components of earnings by financial analysts. In addition, this paper provides evidence that financial analysts, as information intermediaries, are less biased than investors in processing not only the accrual but also the cash components of earnings.

Building on the institutional theory perspective on corporate governance change and based on interviews with investor relations (IR) managers in large Japanese companies, this study aims to examine Japanese IR managers’ perceptions of the influence of foreign shareholders on Japan’s corporate governance reform and stakeholder-based system. The paper examines tensions, conflicts and collaborations among different stakeholders involved in corporate governance changes in Japan, especially in the areas of firm ownership, employment relations and boards of directors. The paper explains why convergence does not happen in some large Japanese companies by investigating Japanese managers’ responses to and perceptions of foreign shareholders in multiple corporate contexts.

The author conducted in-depth interviews with ten IR managers at large, listed Japanese companies in Kyoto and Tokyo and two managers at foreign investment banks in Tokyo, between 2018 and 2021.

This paper explores five themes that emerged from my interviews: Chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) mixed perceptions of foreign investors, the effectiveness of CEO compensation and outside directors, managers’ reluctance to accept stock price-driven business strategies, foreign investors’ engagement vs investments in index funds and gender patterns, including the effectiveness of token female outside directors. The Japanese companies the author looked at incorporated foreign shareholders as consultants and adopted a few major shareholder-based customs, such as CEOs communicating with investors, having outside directors, increasing CEO compensation and slimming down unprofitable parts of the business via restructuring and downsizing. Simultaneously, they resisted a few major shareholder-based practices. Foreign shareholders’ pressure revealed tensions and contradictions between the Japanese stakeholder system and shareholder primacy-based customs.

This paper is one of the few qualitative studies that explores Japanese IR managers’ responses to and perceptions of foreign shareholders in corporate governance reform, with a particular focus on ownership, employment relations and board members. This paper provides examples of tension, conflict and cooperation between Japanese managers and foreign investors, as seen through the eyes of Japanese IR managers. Examining changes in Japan’s stakeholder-based system of corporate governance reform enables us to better understand the processes by which, with vigorous pressure from government and foreign shareholders, a non-western country like Japan may adopt shareholder-based customs and how such a change may also lead to institutional changes.

This study focuses on Malaysian companies because of the confidence shown by the international business community in what is considered to be the best country for corporate governance practice. Additionally, the Malaysian stock market is considered to be the largest stock market in terms of market capitalization in Asia. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the utilization of the internet by Malaysian‐listed companies for investor information or communication. It also examines the content of such investor relations (IR) information compared with similar web sites from other parts of the world.

The sample for the study consists of 100 stock market index‐linked firms listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.

Using a disclosure index for measuring investor information disclosure published in the companies’ web sites, this study revealed that only 70 firms provided investor‐related materials on their web sites. The highest‐ranking investor‐relations item was the background of the companies.

The results confirm that a gap exists between developed countries and developing countries with respect to the utilization of the internet for investor‐relations purposes. This study also provides evidence that governing bodies in East Asia – such as the Securities Commission, the Stock Exchange, and the Accounting Standard Board – should encourage (and, if necessary, enforce) the publication of IR information on company web sites.

Does the rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Central and Eastern Europe lead to supraterritoriality? The analysis of FDI flows between world investor countries and Central and East European (CEE) hosts between 1989 and 2000 shows that the majority of FDI flows into CEE in this period do not exemplify a trend of undifferentiated transcendence of post-communist borders. Rather, FDI flows continue to be based in territoriality and embedded in existing social relations between investor and host countries: migration and trade flows, historical ties, political alliances, and cultural affinities. Nevertheless, the rhetoric supporting the opening of post-communist countries to FDI is widespread and consistent with the neoliberal credo, which has acquired a supraterritorial character. Ultimately, we see that embeddedness and supraterritoriality co-exist but they manifest themselves for distinct FDI phenomena: the concrete economic practice and the economic rhetoric, respectively.