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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a firm’s entrepreneurial proclivity on market performance for large, publicly traded US firms. This study draws upon the five-dimensional view of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and develops hypotheses aimed at understanding the effects of direct effect of CE cues of proactiveness, autonomy, innovativeness, competitive aggressiveness and risk-taking on stock performance during earnings conference calls.

The entrepreneurial orientation of 339 firm post-earnings announcement conference calls is analyzed through a content analysis of transcripts, and the impact of CE cues on stock price is measured using event-study methodology.

The results suggest that the cueing the CE dimensions of innovativeness, risk-taking and especially autonomy have a positive effect on market performance during conference calls, while competitive aggressiveness has a negative effect. No effect was found for proactiveness.

The effect of entrepreneurial proclivity on firm value is not uniform. Not all dimensions of CE have a positive effect on market performance at a corporate level, and measuring each dimension of CE separately may be a valuable approach for future research.

Firms may create more value when they cue specific entrepreneurial attributes, and cueing competitive aggressiveness may not be desirable.

This study fills a gap in the literature by measuring the direct effect of CE cues on market performance through an innovative research design which relies on computer-aided text analysis.

Joint ventures (JVs) are known to create value for their parent firms, in part due to the mutually beneficial sharing of information that occurs at the JV level. Market orientation (MO) is a well-documented strategic orientation that has received little attention in the JV literature, despite considerable research suggesting that MO has a positive effect on performance. This study posits that the MO skills contributed to a new JV by parent firms are likely to play a central role in a shareholder's assessment of the potential for success of a newly announced JV, thereby triggering changes in market value for parent firms.

Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis (CATA) is used to calculate MO heterogeneity from annual reports, and event-study methodology is used to assess parent firm performance. The authors rely on a US sample of 82 public JV parents involved in 41 new equally-weighted JV formation announcements.

The authors find that heterogeneity on MO's behavioral components (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and coordination) is negatively related to parent performance, while heterogeneity on MO's profitability component is positively related to parent performance. However, the effect of MO's long-term focus heterogeneity on parent performance was not supported.

The results suggest that the benefits of information sharing in partnerships may be of a nuanced nature when it comes to MO. Although heterogeneity in profitability inclination created value for parent firms announcing a new JV; heterogeneity in customer, competitor and coordination market orientations did not appear to be rewarded by shareholders.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between downsizing cues and market performance prior to and after a major crisis. We use a recent exogenous shock – the COVID-19 pandemic – to test hypotheses on the nature of the relationship between downsizing cues and market performance within two distinct groups: pre and post-crisis. We purport that the sudden increase in uncertainty brought about by a major crisis widens information asymmetry between firms and their shareholders, and that top managers sending downsizing cues to the market with high levels of authenticity may be more likely to trigger positive market reactions.

The authors rely on computer-assisted text analysis (CATA) methodology, event-study methodology and a data set of 952 pre- and post-crisis earnings conference calls held by 476 S&P 500 firms to test the hypotheses in this study.

The authors find that downsizing cues have no effect on market performance in the pre-crisis group, but are negatively related to market performance in the post-crisis group. The authors also find that authenticity cues positively mitigate the relationship between downsizing cues and market performance relationship in the post-crisis group.

This empirical study extends our knowledge of the influence of a major crisis on the relationship between downsizing and market performance by leveraging the revelatory power of an exogenous environmental shock. The authors also explore the role played by managerial authenticity and find that the market is more inclined to accept post-crisis downsizing efforts when top managers are perceived as authentic.

Past research has generally purported and tested for a positive linear relationship between psychological capital and organizational outcomes such as firm performance. Yet, recent conceptual work has started to recognize that for certain outcomes, too much psychological capital can be as detrimental as too little. In this study, the author hypothesizes that during a major crisis, organizational psychological capital (OPsyCap) may in fact exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with performance.

T leverages the revelatory power of a recent major crisis (the COVID-19 pandemic) to gather a pre-crisis and post-crisis matching sample of 952 earnings conference calls held by 476 S&P 500 firms with corresponding market performance data and use computer-assisted text analysis (CATA) methodology to assess OPsyCap from call transcripts.

T finds that OPsyCap has a statistically significant inverted U-shaped relationship with market performance after the crisis, but not prior—thereby suggesting that moderate OPsyCap is more beneficial to market performance than either insufficient or excessive OPsyCap in times of crisis.

Top managers should not display overly excessive psychological capital after a major crisis, as shareholders may interpret such cues as unwarranted optimism, overconfidence and an inability to accept the new reality brought about by the crisis.

This study's findings contribute to extant literature by being the first to empirically highlight a curvilinear relationship between psychological capital and an important outcome variable—market performance. Furthermore, this study's lack of results prior to a major crisis, but not after, may suggest a new boundary condition.

Past research has generally purported that market orientation (MO) leads to superior firm performance, despite emerging evidence suggesting that the highest levels of MO are not always rewarded. Drawing on resource-based view and MO literature, the authors posit that too much MO may be as detrimental as too little for firms seeking to achieve better performance, and that moderate MO capabilities may be the most beneficial. Furthermore, the authors propose and test for organizational confidence as a first potential moderator of the MO-performance inverted U-shaped link.

The authors use Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis (CATA) methodology assess constructs from annual reports matched with a 5-year longitudinal dataset of 2,245 firm-year observations drawn from the S&P 500.

The results not only support the presence of an inverted U-shaped link between MO and firm performance, but also identify organizational confidence as an important moderator of this newly uncovered curvilinear relationship.

When it comes to the effect of MO on firm performance, there can be indeed be “too much of a good thing,” and managers should be aware of the trade-offs that come attached with overcommitting to a MO strategy.

The authors contribute to extant research on the MO–performance link by moving beyond simple linear relationships and identifying an inverted U-shaped relationship between MO and firm performance. This newly found curvilinear relationship may explain and reconcile prior contradicting findings on the benefits of MO. Organizational confidence is also found to trigger a shape-flip of the MO–performance link, thereby suggesting a new boundary condition.

This paper aims to investigate whether cues of morality can mitigate stock sell-offs in the face of earnings uncertainty prior to earnings conference calls and draws on moral foundations theory to study the effect of universal moral cues (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity rhetoric) and primarily conservative moral cues (ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity rhetoric) on market performance.

The study relies on a longitudinal data set of 1,920 firm-quarter observations corresponding to calls held by firms listed on the S&P 500 in 2015 and relies on computer-assisted-text-analysis and event-study methodology to test hypotheses.

The results suggest that cues of universal moral foundations have a mitigating effect on stock sell-offs and are able to create firm value; while cues primarily conservative moral foundations are not found to have an effect on market performance.

This investigation highlights why earnings conference calls may serve as a valuable tool for communicating a firm’s moral inclination and why universal morality may appeal to a wider range of shareholders than primarily conservative morality.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on investor reactions to unanticipated changes in income, and whether those reactions can be mitigated by managerial discussion. The authors investigate how top-management team certainty and optimism during post-earnings announcement conference calls can serve as corrective actions and add back firm value in times of unexpected changes in firm-specific risk.

The research question is tested empirically in the context of large, publicly traded, US firms’ quarterly earnings announcements, and their subsequent post-earnings announcement conference calls. The authors use the advanced content analysis software DICTION to measure the levels of managerial certainty and optimism displayed during post-earnings announcement conference calls, and event-study methodology to measure investors’ reactions.

Results indicate that earnings surprises are negatively associated with firm value, but that this relationship is mitigated positively by displays of managerial certainty and optimism during post-earnings announcement conference calls.

This work uses an innovative research design to study top-management team rhetoric in post-earnings announcement conference calls, and how specific discussions mitigate investors’ negative reactions to increases in firm-specific risk. The study highlights the importance of top-management team certainty and optimism for value creation in times of change in firm-specific risk, and the importance of rhetoric as a tool for corrective action.

This study is a replication of Wolff and Reed’s (2000) work. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the combination of resources brought to joint ventures influence parent-firm performance. This study is also interested in whether or not the exposure of immobile resources through the semi-transparent membrane of the joint venture can have negative effects on parent-firm performance.

The sample consists of two-parent joint ventures formed by publicly traded US firms between 1997 and 2013. The event-study methodology is used to calculate each parent-firm’s abnormal returns. This work also uses content analysis to analyze parent-firms’ annual reports (10-K).

While Wolff and Reed’s results on resource allocation within joint ventures were not statistically significant, this replication study provided strong support to the resource allocation hypothesis. It was found that intangible resource heterogeneity within a joint venture creates higher performance gains for parent-firms than tangible resource heterogeneity. This work also successfully replicated Wolff and Reed’s findings on the negative impact of immobile resources exposure on parent-firm performance. Wolff and Reed’s results on resource complementarity were, however, not successfully replicated.

This replication study goes beyond simply showing that engaging in a joint venture strategy creates value for parent-firms. Through the use of a new content analysis method, this study was able to provide strong support for Wolff and Reed’s theory on the performance gains provided by resource heterogeneity in a joint venture setting, and to confirm the results on potential adverse performance effects of immobile resources exposure.