Nomen est omen? - Executive names and information release

This study investigates how culture shapes organizational behavior through individual-level internalization, focusing on the pathway from executive enculturation to firms’ external communication strategies. Using a novel proxy based on the semantic similarity between executives’ given names and a traditional virtue lexicon, we measure cultural enculturation at the individual level through natural language processing techniques. Analyzing data from Chinese A-share listed firms between 2010 and 2023, we find that executives with higher levels of cultural enculturation tend to guide their firms toward more restrained and pragmatic tones in financial disclosures. This effect is amplified in regions with stronger Confucian cultural presence and in firms with lower separation between ownership and control. Additional analyses show that enculturated executives are also associated with reduced spending on paid media and fewer instances of promotional news manipulation. By linking micro-level cultural traits to firm-level strategic communication, our findings contribute to cross-disciplinary research on culture and corporate behavior, and offer a scalable method for capturing deep-seated cultural orientation in international business settings.