INVESTOR RELATIONS: Alexander Laskin

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How Investor Relations Contributes to the Corporate Bottom Line

I just published another scholarly article focusing on investor relations: How Investor Relations Contributes to the Corporate Bottom Line. The article reviews academic and professional literature on investor relations contributions and claims that there are four major ways in which investor relations’s contribution can be evaluated:

1. Share price

2. Trading volume

3. Analyst coverage

4. Relationships with the financial community

Then, the study subjected these four theoretical contributions to the scrutiny by the investor relations professionals through the so-called Delphi panel methodology (a method initially developed by the U.S. military to evaluate dangers of the potential USSR attack!).

The results indicated that derived-from-the-literature contributions do not always meet the reality test and must be specified.

Share price largely depends on the performance rather than on investor relations efforts, however, investor relations can help that share price be “fair” – in other words, reflecting the actual value of the company rather than “the higher the better.”

High trading volume or lower trading volume can be equally bad for the company – so, it is more important to look at the efficiency of the market in a stock and broadness of the shareholder base.

Similar situation is with the analysts coverage – not just only good or only bad, but rather its accuracy and uniformity.

Finally, building relationship is a measure difficult to quantify, yet fully supported by the professionals. Investor relations officers, however, must look into costs and benefits of various relationships – hedge fund vs pension fund or private shareholder vs institutional investors.

The full article is published in the Journal of Public Relations Research, 2011, Volume 23, Issue 3, pp.302-324, and is available at the journal web site (although it might require subscription in some cases – then, contact me!)

Investor relations course in the Spring

It looks like this Spring I will be teaching an undergraduate investor relations course. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of IR, the course will be listed in both business curricula and communication curricula.

It will be my second time teaching a course in investor relations, but still I feel pretty excited. After all, investor relations is what I do research about and where I acquired most of my professional experience.

Anyway, any recommendations about the course are welcome!

Also, consider guest-speaking to the class. We are in Hamden - almost half-way between New York and Boston, convenient location for travel by train or by car. It is a chance to give back to the profession and help shape future investor relations officers (they might be working side-by-side with you in one, two, three or ten years!).

An academic article published.

When I was working on my dissertation, I was looking into the history of investor relations in the United States. Today some might be surprised, but investor relations actually started as a public relations function rather than a CFO responsibility. So, I was looking at the history of public relations and corporate communications as well.

Then, I looked at the history of academic research in investor relations (virtually, non-existent even today!). So, I also looked into the history of academic research in public relations and corporate communications.

I ended up writing a pretty good account (in my mind!) of theoretical development in the academic research in public relations. I prepared it as an academic article and sent it to the Journal of Communication Management, one of the leading international journals in the field of public relations and communication management. And after peer-review, it was accepted and published!

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=7D12FA12EBEAE15AF752ECC465705C74?contentType=Article&contentId=1771037

I am quite happy with the outcome!

IR practices: Data summary

In the spirit of academic transparency, I would like to post a summary of data from my dissertation. I shared this information with my survey participants previously and now I would like to make it available to everybody.

My dissertation surveyed investor relations officers in order to develop theory in the investor relations research. Now, for theory-development part I would have to refer you to my actual dissertation, but I would be happy to share here the actual data summary:

Click here for PDF.

The last year

Yesterday I started my final year of the Ph.D. program at UF.......

Back from AEJMC

It is good to be back home. AEJMC was crazy - interviews with schools all day from early in the morning to late in the evening. Always smile, be nice, don't say anything stupid :) I did not even have a chance to attend any sessions, except for the ones I was presenting in, and did not have a chance to see the city.

Oh, well... Maybe when I go to DC for the Association of Business Communication conference in October I will have a chance to do any of the fun stuff... :)

I am a Ph.D. Candidate

Almost done...

Well, I passed my qualifying exams! And even better, I defended my dissertation proposal - the first three chapters. So, the only thing left is to actually do the study and write up the results.

It feels good!

:)

Research project completed!

The project that I worked at for awhile, measuring the investor relations' contribution to the organizational bottom line, is complete. It is a qualitative study so no quantifiable measures were created (would not we all like to have objective numbers!). But at least professionals had a chance to discuss scholarly ideas on the value of IR and seemed to, in general, agree with them. This is a good sign. I think...

Here is the link: http://www.instituteforpr.org/index.php/ipr/research_single/value_of_investor_relations