What Drives Chief Executive Officer Activism and What Chief Executive Officer Activism Drives: Why Chief Executive Officers Speak Out, When Firms Translate Activist Stances into Action, and How Chief Executive Officer Activism Builds Social Momentum

Chief executive officer (CEO) activism—CEOs’ personal and public expression of a stance on a sociopolitical debate aimed at influencing opinions in the espoused direction—is often understood as stemming primarily from CEOs’ political ideology and studied through its effects on distinct audiences, such as employees, consumers, and investors. Building on CEO activism research and integrating insights from upper echelons theory, institutional theory, nonmarket strategy, social movements, psychology, and social evaluations, this dissertation unpacks what remains less clear on both sides of this definition. On the “personal expression” side, it introduces CEO narcissism as a complementary explanation given its prevalence among CEOs, link to attention seeking, and relevance to a visible act like CEO activism. On the “public influence” side, it examines consequences beyond isolated audience reactions: whether public stances are followed by firm sustainability-related initiatives and how CEO activism travels through several actors whose interactions can generate social momentum and raise issue salience for policymakers. Across three essays, issue characteristics emerge as central to understanding why CEOs choose particular topics and what follows once they do. The issues that CEOs choose shape the attention that a CEO’s stance attracts, the conditions for firm follow-through, and the likelihood that a stance travels into public and political debate. Taken together, the essays show that issues most likely to draw attention to CEOs may be least likely to generate firm follow-through yet still matter for public and political debate.

Funding: This work was supported by funding from the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) under the Investissements d’Avenir programme [Grant ANR-18-EURE-0005 / EUR DATA EFM].