Research

WRONGDOERS OR SAVIORS? CEO ACTIVISM, MEDIA PARTISANSHIP, AND THE MEDIA’S CONSTRUCTION OF CEO INFAMY AND CELEBRITY 

Provisional accept - Organization Science 

(with V. Misangyi)

This study advances research on social evaluations by theorizing how polarized media construct CEO infamy differently than CEO celebrity. Rather than treating infamy as a negative form of celebrity, we develop a theory of CEO infamy as a media-constructed negative social evaluation grounded in different dramaturgical logics. Focusing on a highly salient and ideologically polarizing executive behavior—CEOs’ engagement in liberal sociopolitical activism—we argue that the same behavior can generate divergent social constructions across partisan outlets: infamy in conservative media and celebrity in liberal media. We further theorize that activism more readily generates infamy than celebrity because infamy relies on structurally simpler narrative forms, and negative deviance is easier to construe than positive deviance. We also identify two boundary conditions. Firm performance asymmetrically amplifies these constructions: poorer performance strengthens conservative-media infamy, whereas stronger performance strengthens liberal-media celebrity. CEO social media engagement, by contrast, attenuates traditional media’s ability to construct these evaluations, especially celebrity, by reducing informational scarcity and weakening outlets’ narrative discretion. We empirically develop and validate a sophisticated LLM-based annotation system that captures CEO-directed sentiment, CEO role attribution, and the dramaturgical narrative structures used by the media. Assessing the coverage of 705 S&P 500 CEOs by 45 polarized U.S. media outlets from 2015 to 2022, we find broad support for our hypotheses. Overall, the study contributes to research on CEO infamy, celebrity, activism, and broader social evaluations by situating these phenomena within a partisan media ecosystem that constructs sharply divergent evaluations from the same CEO behavior.

CEO SELECTION AS RISK-TAKING: A NEW VANTAGE ON THE DEBATE ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF INSIDERS VERSUS OUTSIDERS 

Strategic Management Journal, vol 40 issue 9 (1453- 1470)

(with T. Quigley, D. Hambrick, V. Misangyi)

This study framed CEO selection as a risk‐taking approach, reconciling a multitude of different perspectives on the effects of the relationship between CEO origin and firm performance. We argued that outsider CEOs are riskier hires as compared to insider CEOs, with a greater tendency to generate more unpredictable and “extreme” performance outcomes—either positive or negative—as compared to insiders. We based this expectation on two complementary theoretical perspectives: human capital and information asymmetry. In a selection context, human capital theory is concerned with assessing what the candidate knows about the firm and whether his or her talent will be transferable to the organization. Conversely, information asymmetry takes the opposite perspective, asking what the firm knows about the candidate. Our multiple tests (matched pair analysis, propensity score matching, endogeneity checks) on a large sample of CEO successions, with controls for endogeneity, found that outsiders are indeed associated with more extreme performance outcomes than are insiders, thus reconciling decades of contradictory studies about the effects of CEO origin and firm performance.

A CEO-DRIVEN PROCESS MODEL OF FIRM RESPONSIVENESS TO SECONDARY STAKEHOLDER DEMANDS: THE ROLES OF CEO VALUES AND PASSION. 

Journal of Management, 2026 

(with F. Neville, J.B. Lovelace)

Secondary stakeholder demands represent increasingly important strategic issues for firms. However, the principal drivers of firm response remain poorly understood. We extend research on firm responsiveness to secondary stakeholders by introducing a new theoretical perspective to detail the cognitive processes through which key CEO attributes—namely, personal values and passion—shape the trajectories of firm responsiveness. We first outline key aspects of secondary stakeholder demands to explain why CEO values and passion are important determinants of a firm’s response to secondary stakeholder demands. We then explain how a CEO’s values and passion influence the process of firm responsiveness. Finally, we extend our arguments to illustrate how values and passion-infused responses may influence social (dis)approval among key organizational stakeholders. By focusing on the cognitive processes of CEOs, we offer novel theoretical contributions to stakeholder theory, strategic leadership research, and the literature on firm social evaluations.