CEO Digital Activism and Its Impact on Corporate Reputation Management

Social media constitutes a digital arena for public debates and steady interchange of issues relevant to society. Commercial organizations, too, engage in political, social, or moral debates on social media. Here, they are increasingly represented by individual proxies such as CEOs instead of their corporate brand. This study aims to investigate hitherto little-understood dynamics between the role of CEO digital activism and corporate reputation. To this end, we conducted qualitative interviews with CEOs and other executives to explore this emerging phenomenon. We find that CEOs engaging in digital activism is a double-edged sword from an organizational point of view. It may positively affect corporate reputation through thought leadership and increased popularity and authenticity. At the same time, CEO digital activism poses the risk of financial loss, strategic misalignment between the individual and organizational communication strategies, and additional surface for social media firestorms. Based on these findings, we contribute a theoretical framework of CEO digital activism to information systems (IS) research that integrates with previously known dimensions of corporate reputation management. Furthermore, our study informs practitioners about strategic trade-offs that need to be considered when engaging in digital activism campaigns.