Earnings Call Transcripts as a Source and Resource for Information Systems Research

Quarterly earnings conference calls are used by publicly traded firms to share detailed information about their financial performance with external stakeholders. Earnings calls consist of two parts: a prepared remarks section by the company’s leadership and a section for questions and answers with analysts. Earnings Call Transcripts are textual narratives of these calls and serve as a crucial source of information for analysts, investors, and researchers. These transcripts have historically played a pivotal role in offering insights into the financial performance, strategic direction, and overall dynamics of publicly traded firms. Despite their significance, Earnings Call Transcripts have been the subject of study predominantly within finance and accounting literature. It is noteworthy that these studies have neglected the vast potential that Earnings Call Transcripts hold for the field of information systems, such as the ability to infer digital endowments and strategies. The objective of this chapter is to present an extensive review of the literature on Earnings Call Transcripts, clarifying their structural intricacies and historical development and highlighting their untapped potential for the information systems field. We explain how the data expressed in Earnings Call Transcripts can provide a rich resource to analyze organizational strategies and outcomes related to digital and information technologies. To illustrate this assertion, we provide an analysis of Earnings Call Transcripts from the S&P1500 firms for a period of 15 years, starting from 2006 and ending in 2021, which consists of nearly 44 million unique questions and answers statements. Overall, the primary motivation of this chapter is to encourage scholars within the IS domain to recognize and utilize Earnings Call Transcripts as a valuable resource for their research.