Reginald L. Bell

The Manager's Role in Financial Reporting: A Risk Consultant's Perspective.

ORGANIZATIONS TODAY RELY on effective communication strategies to maintain their reputations by satisfying the information demands of increasingly skeptical shareholders and vigilant regulators. One aspect of a company’s communication strategy is its financial reporting: informing stakeholders about a company’s economic performance using more standardized, easy-to-dissect formats and language. Although these reporting requirements have been decried as onerous by some, they allow for more accurate communication and easier comparison among companies. Yet despite the move to greater transparency, there is still the notion that corporations use their reports, particularly the annual report, as glossy, image-shaping communication tools, while hiding the substance of their performance (Turner, 2005). The availability of the Internet has also transformed reporting practices. Stakeholders demand more information at shorter intervals, so companies now place entire quarterly and annual reports online, thereby making them accessible to anyone (Davis, Keuer, & Clements, 2002). These developments in the communication systems affect the accountability of senior executives and board members, and increasingly of managers at various levels of the organization. This column offers the perspectives of several persons who play a role in, or consult on, the reporting process in their organization. The first article, by Reginald Bell, describes how the roles and experiences of managers have become key players in their organizations’

Comparing Perceived Listening Behavior Differences Between Managers and Nonmanagers Living in the United States, India, and Malaysia

Many managers and employees work in multinational organizations, but know little about what constitutes good or bad listening skills from a cross-cultural perspective. Little literature exists concerning the listening behaviors of managers and nonmanagers or the impact of national culture on listening skills. No clear understanding of what constitutes effective and ineffective listening across various cultures and organizational positions is known. Therefore, this study examines the listening skills of both managers and nonmanagers from India, the United States, and Malaysia. A total of 513 managers and nonmanagers from these countries completed a survey measuring self-perceptions of their engagement in four listening behaviors: distracted listening, empathetic listening, judgment rushing, and conclusion jumping. An analysis of variance procedure, with a 2 × 3 factorial design, was used to ascertain whether differences existed when each of the four derived factors was used one at a time as a dependent variable. The two independent variables were managers/nonmanagers and country of residence. The means differed on the main effects of managers/nonmanagers (p < .001) and country of residence (p < .001) and interaction between managers and nonmanagers across the United States, India, and Malaysia (p < .001) on all four factors. Therefore, perceptions of engaging in distracted listening, empathetic listening, judgment rushing, and conclusion jumping are different for managers and nonmanagers living in the United States, India, and Malaysia. This study’s findings will help both managers and nonmanagers from these countries understand the positives and negatives of these four listening practices and the influence of national culture on listening behaviors.