{"id":7217,"date":"2025-08-11T14:06:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=7217"},"modified":"2025-08-11T18:06:43","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T18:06:43","slug":"ceos-social-activism-can-be-homeruns-or-strikeouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/ceos-social-activism-can-be-homeruns-or-strikeouts\/","title":{"rendered":"CEOs\u2019 Social Activism Can Be Homeruns or Strikeouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

CEOs who speak out about controversial social or political issues can gain or lose likeability in the eyes of stakeholders. It can be a masterstroke, a debacle, or a mixed bag.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Donald Hambrick<\/a> of Pennsylvania State University, who cowrote an article in Academy of Management Review<\/em><\/a> with coauthor Adam Wowak of the University of Notre Dame on this topic, said that they were motivated to research this subject by the dramatic increase in the incidences of CEOs speaking out about social and political issues that don\u2019t have any bearing on their organizations\u2019 bottom lines, at least in the near term. The large number of citations and amount of follow-up research indicate that their article has struck a chord.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general over the ages, this phenomenon of CEOs taking a public stance on thorny sociopolitical issues had been unheard of, but it\u2019s become more and more common in the last few years,\u201d Hambrick said. \u201cWe were interested in trying to build a theory based on logic about why CEOs would do this and what the consequences are.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stakeholder alignment model is that CEOs will do it in proportion to the degree that they anticipate that their stakeholders, especially employees and customers, will agree with and applaud what it is they\u2019re going to say,\u201d he said. \u201cSo they have to anticipate their sociopolitical stance, the political beliefs of these stakeholders, and then, after they engage in this behavior of speaking out on, let\u2019s say, LGBTQ rights or the environment or whatever, the reactions from stakeholders will be in line with what it is their pre-existing convictions are.<\/p>\n

\u201cCEOs can gain ground in the eyes of some stakeholders, and they can lose ground in the eyes of other stakeholders, depending upon prevailing political sentiments.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

A sample of Hambrick\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/em><\/p>\n