Executives’ Tone Management and Corporate Financial Sustainability: A Corporate Governance Perspective

This study uses Chinese A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2023 as the research sample (comprising a total of 18,053 firm-year observations) and explores the impact of executive tone manipulation on corporate sustainable growth capability from the perspective of corporate governance. Benchmark fixed-effects regression results indicate that the regression coefficient of tone manipulation on the sustainable growth rate is −0.141 ( p < 0.01). Corporate financial sustainability is measured by the sustainable growth rate, an indicator reflecting a firm’s endogenous growth capacity while maintaining existing financial policies and operational efficiency. This differs distinctly from “broad-based sustainability” measured by ESG metrics. Therefore, this study focuses on sustainability in the financial dimension and further analyzes the moderating effects of corporate social responsibility information disclosure quality, institutional investor ownership ratio, and board independence. The findings reveal that executive tone manipulation significantly undermines corporate financial sustainability, while sound governance mechanisms can effectively mitigate this adverse impact. This research enriches the theoretical framework of financial sustainability studies from the perspectives of linguistic information and behavioral governance and provides policy implications for information disclosure regulation and governance optimization.