Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Troubled Mortgage CEO Rhetoric Gives Clues To Problems?

An interesting study was reported by the Omaha World Herald. According to the article, a report published in the journal Corporate Reputation Review, concluded that word style in corporate communication to shareholders could classify corporate reputation as either low or high within an accuracy level of 81%.

The Corporate Reputation Review is associated with the Reputation Institute, a private company which provides consulting services to companies wishing to manage and measure their reputation.

Interestingly the report uses American Home Mortgage Investment Corp's CEO Michael Strauss as an example. The company (and my former employer), filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007. John Geppert, one of the report's authors, said that Strauss' letter used a word style which demonstrated little concreteness and a high degree of complexity, attributes associated with low-reputation firms.

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