Chief Executive Officers With A Cause? CEO Activism And Firms’ Governance, Strategy, And Performance

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12565

Call for Papers

Corporate Governance: An International Review

Special Issue on

“Chief Executive Officers With A Cause?

CEO Activism And Firms’ Governance, Strategy, And Performance”

Special Issue Submission Deadline: September 30, 2024

Guest Editors

Jatinder S. Sidhu, University of Leeds, UK

Dimitrios Georgakakis, University of York, UK

Wei Shi, University of Miami, USA

Mariano L.M. Heyden, Monash University, Australia

Albert A. Cannella, Jr., Texas A&M University, USA

BACKGROUND

The fortunes of firms are said to depend on their chief executive officers (CEOs). The

last ten years have witnessed the emergence of an intriguing new phenomenon that

is consequential for the governance, strategy, and performance of firms – CEO

sociopolitical activism, or more simply, CEO activism. The phenomenon does not

resonate well with the traditional models and understanding of the substance and

boundaries of a CEO’s role. Described as the taking of public stances on socio-

economic and socio-political issues that often do not have an evident relationship with

the business of a company, CEO activism is mushrooming and may have implications

beyond firms for the broader society (Chatterjee & Toffel, 2018; Hambrick & Wowak,

2021; Hersh, 2023; Krause & Miller, 2020). Whereas in the past, CEOs avoided

becoming involved in contentious societal debates, lest it may antagonize internal and

external stakeholders, this is not the case anymore. From capital-intensive

manufacturing concerns, through consumer-goods companies, fashion houses, and

social-media enterprises, to financial services and investment firms, CEOs in diverse

sectors have become vocal proponents of social causes, boldly going where corporate

leaders had notgonebefore (Branicki et al., 2021; Chatterjee & Toffel, 2019; Rumstadt

& Kanbach, 2022).

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