Discovery at Carlson·23 The Risks and Rewards of Negative Peer Disclosures
The Risks and Rewards of Negative Peer Disclosures
By and large, corporate social media posts are not where you’d expect to find provocative content. Most tend to fall into common categories—product announcements, earnings disclosures, industry awards, and the like. Safe, inoffensive, even predictable, right? Well, yes. But research by Carlson School Associate Professor Vivian Fang has uncovered an emerging —and entirely different— type of post, one that shatters those stereotypes and shows how some companies are using social media to boost their prospects in a cunning and subtle fashion. Fang’s even coined a term for it: negative peer disclosure, or NPD, for short.

卡尔森学院副教授Vivian Fang
According to Fang, the concept is quite simple. “Imagine there are two companies—let’s call them firm A and firm B—that compete in the same industry,” she explains. “If firm A discloses negative information about firm B without mentioning anything about itself in a tweet, we’d consider that a NPD.”
To illustrate her point, Fang offers the example of what happened between Dropbox/Box and Globalscape, two companies that compete in the online file storage space. In 2014, news broke of a Dropbox security flaw that exposed its users’ private data. Globalscape responded by retweeting a news article with this headline: “Dropbox and Box Leak Files in Security Through Obscurity Nightmare.”
“When the negative news came out about Dropbox and Box, Globalscape could have been affected in two ways,” Fang says. “On one hand, it could have been positive, since Globalscape didn’t have any security breakdowns. At the same time, it could also have been negative—the market might have assumed Globalscape was subject to the same technology vulnerability.”
Hence the tweet, which is a classic example of a NPD. "That tweet was a signal to the market, "Fang explains. "It was the equivalent of Globalscape proclaiming, 'What happened to Dropbox doesn't apply to us.'"
Globalscape is far from the only user of NPDs. Fang’s research found similar social posts issued by such well-known and successful companies as Nvidia, T-Mobile, Symantec, and others. “Based on the sample we studied, the NPDs were mostly disclosed by firms that were doing well,” Fang says. “Just as with Globalscape, they used NPDs as an implicit form of self-disclosure to send a credible, positive signal to the market: ‘Look, we’re very competitive. We’re not affected by this negative news.’”
NPDs also appear to be a way around the corporate compliance and legal departments scrubbing social posts clean of potentially controversial material before they’re released. When issuing a NPD, you’re not explicitly criticizing your competitors—you’re simply sharing fact-based news reports. As Fang’s research points out, the approach appears to work. Firms using NPDs tend to outperform their non-NPD-using peers.
That said, there are potential drawbacks. For example, the practice could backfire if a company issues a NPD only to later suffer from the same issues it posted about. “Social media sites like Twitter are fully transparent,” says Fang. “So, firms that post NPDs should anticipate increased scrutiny from rivals, consumers, and other market participants.”
Exchange Commission are only now starting to grasp the implications of NPDs, and it can be challenging for them to take action. “We’ve learned that some companies have set up intermediaries and used Twitter bots to post NPDs, which makes it difficult for regulators to trace or monitor,” she explains. “I’m also aware of some companies, particularly in Asia, that are using public relations firms to issue NPDs on their behalf. That’s not quite booming in U.S. yet. But, it certainly appears to be an emerging new industry—and one that regulators will need to take a closer look at.”

同行负面披露的得与失
一般情况下,企业不会在社交媒体账户里发布争议性内容。他们发布的帖子大致是以下类型:产品公告、收益披露、行业奖项。这些内容很安全、无害、甚至老套,对吗?但是,卡尔森学院副教授Vivian Fang发现了一种全新的、完全不同的发帖类型,这种类型打破了上述刻板印象,说明一些公司真正使用一种狡猾而巧妙的方式在社交媒体上推销自己。Fang为此提出了一个术语:同行负面披露,简称NPD。
Fang教授表示,这个概念很简单。“设想A公司和B公司是两家具有竞争关系的同行企业。如果A公司在推特上披露B公司的负面信息,并且没有提及本公司的任何信息,那么这就是一条NPD。”
Fang以网络存储领域的竞争对手Dropbox/Box和Globalscape为例,进一步解释了这个概念。2014年,Dropbox被曝出存在安全漏洞,泄露了用户私人数据。随后,Globalscape在推特上转发了一篇新闻,标题为“Dropbox/Box感染Obscurity Nightmare,泄露客户个人文件”。
Fang解释道:“当Dropbox/Box出现负面新闻时,Globalscape可能受到正面影响,因为它没有安全故障;但也可能受到负面影响,因为市场可能怀疑它也存在同样的技术漏洞。”
因此,Globalscape发了这条推文,这也是一个典型的NPD案例。“那条推文向市场发出信号,Globalscape藉此宣称,‘Dropbox的问题没有波及到我们。’”
NPD远不止Globalscape公司。Fang教授在研究中发现,英伟达、德国电信、赛门铁克等知名企业也发布过类似的内容。“根据研究样本发现,NPD主要来自Globalscape这样的成功企业。他们把NPD当作一种隐性自我宣传的手段,向市场发出积极可信的信号:‘看!我们十分有竞争力,这些负面消息与我们无关。’”
NPD也是一种绕过企业合规和法务的方式,因为企业会事先删除帖子中可能有争议的内容。发布NPD并非明确批评竞争对手,而只是在分享基于事实的新闻报道。Fang的研究显示,这种方法是有效的。使用NPD的企业往往比同行的绩效更好。
但是,NPD也可能造成问题。如果一家企业在发布NPD后也出现了同样的问题,那么该企业将反受其害。“Twitter这样的社交媒体是完全透明的。因此,企业一旦发布NPD,后续就会受到竞争对手、消费者和其他市场参与者的更严格的审视。”Fang表示。
NPD还可能带来监管风险。但是,Fang认为,证交会等机构才开始发现NPD的影响,目前尚不太可能据此采取行动。她解释道:“根据我们的了解,一些企业设立中间机构、使用Twitter机器人发布NPD,因此监管机构难以追踪监测。还有一些企业通过公关公司来发布NPD,这在亚洲尤其常见,在美国还没有流行起来。但是,这肯定是一个趋势,也是监管机构需要关注的。”