Self‐Serving CEO Activism? How the Business‐Relatedness of CEO Activism and CEO Morality Interact and Spill Over to CSR Motives

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) activism, defined as chief executive officers publicly engaging with contentious sociopolitical issues, can evoke mixed stakeholder reactions and even harm a corporate reputation. Although the business‐relatedness of CEO activism has been highlighted as important, evidence of its impact on stakeholders remains inconclusive. To address this, the present study examines CEO activism in conjunction with another substantial moral signal: CEO moral behavior. Drawing on attribution theory, our empirical studies demonstrate that the business‐relatedness of CEO activism reduces perceptions of a self‐serving motive—but only when the CEO's morality is not questioned. When the CEO's morality is questioned in their private life, business‐relatedness instead heightens perceptions of self‐serving motives. This attribution spills over to evaluations of the organization: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are perceived as less genuine, ultimately harming corporate reputation. This study offers new insights into the attribution of CEO activism motives within the context of CEO morality and CSR.