ACCOUNTING WORKSHOP Managers’ cultural background and disclosure attributes

We examine how cultural background, inferred from a manager’s ethnicity, affects managers’ communication with investors. Using a sample of earnings conference calls transcripts with 26,430 executives from 42 countries, we find that managers from ethnic groups that have a more individualistic culture (i) use a more optimistic tone, (ii) exhibit greater self-reference, and (iii) make fewer apologies in their disclosure narratives. Managers’ ethnic culture has a lasting effect on their narratives—the effects persist even for executives who are later exposed to different ethnic cultures through work experience. We find that the capital market responds positively to optimistic tone yet does not distinguish between the optimism in tone of managers from different ethnic backgrounds. The findings suggest that managers’ ethnic backgrounds have a significant effect on how they communicate with the capital markets and how the markets respond to the disclosure event.