Legal provisions in the BP annual report: is an expectation of neutrality realistic during ongoing legal proceedings?

Description

A staff seminar presentation of the initial findings of research into impression management and neutrality in accounting disclosure. Using the example of reporting of provisions in the BP annual reports in the years following the Deepwater Horizon incident, this talk demonstrates how a spatial model and anchoring theory can frame understanding of accounting disclosure, allowing us to consider the likelihood of defensive, rather than neutral, presentation of subjective balances. Drawing on previous findings in impression management literature, a discourse analysis of the BP annual report from 2014 has been conducted to identify hallmarks of defensive presentation.

Period	Oct 2017
Held at	Economics, Accountancy & Finance