Framing a Franchise – Financial Disclosure, non-GAAP Earnings, and Equity Valuation in the Formation of a Socio-Technical Agencement

• Author / Creator

  Fox, Kenneth A

• This dissertation provides a qualitative case study of a Canadian Public company, its financial reporting, its interaction with financial analysts, and the valuation modeling conducted by the analysts. Presented in four empirical chapters, the corporate practices and processes that lead to the identification and calculation of non-GAAP (i.e., pro forma) earnings measures, the communication of those measures to financial analysts through conference calls, and the use of those measures in the analyst’ equity valuation models is described. In providing a detailed description of these individual processes, the dissertation contributes to the accounting literature that has been lacking in such an examination of the micro-processes of financial reporting and valuation. Taken as a whole, the dissertation contributes to the literature on calculation and distributed financial cognition that examines the framing processes that are implicated in the construction of a socio-technical agencement.
  Relying on empirical data gathered from interviews with managers and financial analysts, content analysis of corporate financial disclosure, conference call transcripts, analysts’ reports, and analysts’ models, the dissertation provides a unique study of the financial reporting and valuation processes from start to finish. This study joins a small and emerging body of research that extends the contribution of Actor-Network Theory’s sociology of translation to the study of financial markets, and is unique in its application of that perspective to the study of corporate financial reporting.
  This dissertation finds that corporate financial reporting evolves and changes, and voluntary reporting practices are adopted and adapted, through interaction with important financial statement users, financial analysts. Rather than the uni-directional influence of one on the other studied in much of the mainstream accounting research, corporate reporting practices are a collaborative effort, as managers change their reporting to meet user’s needs.
  Building upon this finding of collaborative practices, the dissertation also finds that the resulting key metric taken as representative of the performance of the company is also the result of collaboration. The formation of a socio-technical agencement that establishes a list of entities for consideration in calculation, rearranges them, and associates them in chains of calculations supported by managers, analysts, and their devices underpins the analysts’ “franchise”. This franchise is the result of the achievement of distributed action, which is calculation.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Valuation
  • Socio-Technical Agencement
  • Pro forma earnings
  • Financial Analysts

• Graduation date

  Fall 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3VT1GV84

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.