Research

Research program

My research examines the behavior of top management teams under severe threat — how executives perceive threats to their organizations, and how those perceptions shape risk-taking and strategic communication. I combine theory from behavioral strategy and corporate governance with computational methods for analyzing text, audio, and visual disclosure data at scale.

Active projects

Paraverbal communication and market audiences

Verbal communication is not only about what is being said, but also about how words are delivered. This line of work extracts paraverbal features — tone of voice, speech tempo, silence — from executive speech in earnings calls, and examines how they shape the judgments of security analysts and investors.

Psychological ownership in the firm

Firm ownership is not solely the formal equity actors possess; it is also about how much actors feel the organization is theirs. This project studies how psychological ownership emerges among organizational actors and what it implies for governance.

Attention under crisis

Crises cause the attention of decision makers to oscillate. Using large-scale text analysis of corporate disclosure, this project traces how managerial attention shifts, narrows, and rebounds when organizations face financial distress.

Status shifts and audience communication

When organizations gain or lose status, expert and general audiences talk about them differently. This project maps those communication patterns and their consequences.

Publications & proceedings

How Incongruence Between Managers' Tone of Voice and Word Sentiment Influences Security Analysts
Berns, J., & Simons, T. (2022). Academy of Management Proceedings. Proceedings.
CEO Attention, Emotion, and Communication in Corporate Financial Distress
Berns, J. (2022). PhD dissertation, CentER, Tilburg University. Dissertation.
Attention to Reference Point Formation: Examining How Attention Affects Reference Dependence
Berns, J., & Simons, T. (2021). Academy of Management Proceedings. Proceedings · Best Paper nomination, STR division.
No matching items

Doctoral supervision

Together with dr. Francesca Ciulli and Prof. dr. Tine Buyl, I supervise Jingni He (PhD candidate, since 2024) on the Starter Grant project “Giving and losing sense: How CEOs navigate the disruptive gales of AI adoption.”