motive imagery and corporate success

8/14/2019 Motive Imagery and Corporate Success

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Motive Imagery and

Corporate SuccessOrganizational Studies Honors Thesis

Explanatory Presentation

September 16, 2008


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Hypothesis

Motive imagery (affiliation, achievement, power) links tocorporate metrics Motive imagery is a proven psychological metric that looks at

language and assesses it in three categories Affiliation The motivation for togetherness

Achievement The motivation to succeed Power The motivation to assert oneself

Corporate Metrics Stock Price Profit Margin Revenues

EBITDA Employees Dividends MorningStar Ratings


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Research Design

Corporations providegoods and services

Each year, corporationsthat are publicly tradedhave to produce adocument called aForm 10-K for theSecurities and ExchangeCommission (SEC)summarizing corporate

data Along with this financial

data is typically a Letterto the Shareholder
http://www.sec.gov/answers/form10k.htmhttp://www.sec.gov/answers/form10k.htm


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Research Design

The Letter to the Shareholdercontains a carefully assembledmessage from the CEO orChairman of the Corporationabout the corporationsperformance over the previous

fiscal year It will contain significant

occurrences from the previousyear and will establish andarticulate the corporationsstrategy for the coming years

The way that this information isconveyed is at the core of theresearch you will beconducting


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Research Design

As a research assistant, Iwould need you to readthrough between 28 and42 companys Letters to

the Shareholders for a 3year span

While reading, you wouldscore passages for typesof motive imagery (power,

achievement, affiliation) The purpose of doing this

is to achieve unbiasedinter-rater reliability


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Research Design

When two unbiasedraters code for the samething, a coefficient isdetermined as to howreliable the scores for

motive imagery actuallyare, which makes formuch stronger thesisargumentation

Writing a thesis is very

much like developing aprosecution or defense ina court case; its all aboutfilling in the holes


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Why Would You Do This Study?

Opportunity to read and learn all about corporate strategy Familiarize yourself with the numbers of certain industries

The air filter industry is 10B/year? The wrapping paper industry is2B/year? These are fun things to know

The companies I am using are drawn from a random sample fromthe NYSE. You will be amazed at the diversity in types oforganizations that exist

Get acquainted with a phenomenal and proven psychological metric Motive imagery (power, achievement, affiliation) has already been

proven by Professor David Winter (at the University of Michigan) tocorrelate to outcomes in Politics

Take part in a completely original study that has never been performedin the history of the world Imagine if we actually find something?

Learn what it would be like to perform your own Honors Thesis researchexperiment


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Why Would You Do This Study?


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motive imagery and corporate success

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