مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

Previous management and marketing research on the imitation of voluntary disclosure, mainly focused on the disclosure of CSR activities, shows that due to institutional forces, firms tend to adopt the practices of their main organizational field (e.g., Comyns, 2016; Frias-Aceituno, Rodríguez-Ariza, & Garcia-Sánchez, 2014; Hahn & Kühnen, 2013; Higgins, Stubbs, & Milne, 2015; Moseñe, Burritt, Sanagustín, Moneva, & Tingey-Holyoak, 2013; Nikolaeva & Bicho, 2011; Rego, Cunha, & Poló- nia, 2015). However, this research provides limited insight into the potential forces that can moderate this imitation behavior. In particular, it is known that firms tend to follow the voluntary disclosure behavior of other organizations, but there is no clear picture of why they imitate this behavior beyond the notion of institutional factors. This work explores the different nuances of imitation. We specifically show that a firm’s incentives to imitate the voluntary disclosure practices of different types of organizations are moderated by informational and competitive incentives.

We examine prior literature addressing the imitation of other business practices (i.e., other than voluntary disclosure) (e.g., Lieberman & Asaba, 2006; Ordanini, Rubera, & DeFillippi, 2008). This literature indicates that firms imitate the practices of other organizations because either they do not have enough information to assess the consequences of those practices (informational reasons) or they want to protect their market positions (rivalry reasons). In the former case, firms tend to imitate other better informed organizations. In the latter case, firms imitate the actions of their direct competitors (e.g., Lieberman & Asaba, 2006; Ordanini et al., 2008). Using this framework, the present study explores whether firm experience and the intensity of product market competition influence an individual firm’s incentives to imitate the voluntary disclosure actions of other firms. We claim that firms with more experience are less likely to replicate the disclosure actions of informed organizations or other similar firms in their organizational field. Likewise, firms imitate the disclosure actions of their direct rivals to neutralize the potential risk of losing market share and preserve their status quo in the market. Thus, we claim that firms facing greater competition are more likely to imitate the actions of their direct competitors. To test these notions, this study uses the newspaper industry in Spain during 1966–۱۹۹۳ as an empirical setting. Specifically, the authors examine a firm’s decision of whether to disclose its circulation figure to the market (i.e., number of newspapers sold).

As mentioned, this study enriches the previous management and marketing research on the imitation of voluntary disclosure by providing insights about the different forces driving a firm’s incentives to imitate. Specifically, this work shows that the imitation of voluntary disclosure practices (similarly to the imitation of business practices) is moderated by informational and competitive incentives. In addition, this study contributes to the scarce accounting literature directly exploring the imitation of voluntary disclosure (e.g., Aerts, Cormier, & Magnan, 2006; Brown, Gordon, & Wermers, 2006; Tse & Tucker, 2010) by showing that the incentives to imitate do not only depend on thenature of the information (i.e., bandwagons of positive or negative news) but also are contingent on non-financial factors such as firm experience and competition. Similarly, this study complements the previous literature on the imitation of voluntary disclosure by showing that firms have incentive to imitate the actions of other organizations, to satisfy not only the informational requirements of agents in the financial markets but also the informational needs of their direct customers in the product market. Hence, this study is aligned with accounting academics’ suggestions for the need to expand accounting research beyond its current financial–economics approach (e.g., Oler, Oler, & Skousen, 2010).