Shifting Our Lenses to Behavioral Finance Paradigm

Abstract

Recent crisis periods have shown how corporate communication could contribute to organizational performance regarding financial outcomes, reputation concern, etc. The efforts to reduce information asymmetry, deal with agency problems, improve stakeholder engagement have brought it to the fore. Past research on reporting mechanisms has overly focused on its normative structure and manifested ethical or problematic issues. Some research has argued credibility of both reporters and assurance providers of this information. Although some limited research on management control over reporting mechanisms and on some weaknesses of assurance providers' verification statements, this research doesn't explain enough why this manipulative control occurs. Shifting our lenses to behavioral finance paradigm, it's understood that judgmental decision making seems to be exposed to diverse systematical biases and fallacies. Amidst them, inopportune optimism, alias overconfidence, stands for one of the most serious biases.