Ekonomiska krisers påverkan på kommunikationen via årsredovisningar : En longitudinell studie om SEB:s kommunikation av bolagsstyrning

Today, companies annual reports are an important instrument to reduce the uncertainty and the gap of information that exists between the company and its investors. Therefor can the agent and principal theory be seen as the parent theory on which the study assumes that the management of the selected company has more information then the investors. Unlike previous years, when the content of annual reports purely were financial statements, the report works today as an important marketing channel for companies. The annual reports will inform the investors about the companies business and thereby legitimize the company. The communication to the investors through the annual reports is a difficult and complex task, especially in times of financial turmoil and turbulence.The purpose of this study is to create understanding for communicating through external reporting on corporate governance, during economic crises designed to reduce information asymmetry and increase business legitimacy. This has been done by a longitudinal study in which a Swedish bank's annual reports have been analysed during four selected economic crises. The encoding has been done by identifying signals in two major categories, risk and capital. Based on how the signals have been framed in the financial statements they are allocated to either future-oriented signals or historically oriented signals. After the study has been done we have identified differences in communication during economic crises, both in terms of risk and capital. One conclusion of this study can thus be seen as the companies communications of narrative signals are affected by economic crises in the sense that the number of signals appears to increase during periods of crisis. We have also found that the number of signals has increased over time and that companies have put much more emphasis on communication during “Eurokrisen” compered to “Fastighetskrisen”. This ends to the conclusion that companies tend to increase their signalling through annual reports in line with the company's investors place higher demands on communication in order to create or maintain legitimacy.Validerat; 20141105 (global_studentproject_submitter