Conference Agenda

Our study aimed to explore if and how the international growing trend of CEO activism is manifesting in the Portuguese context, by exploring the perspective of Portuguese CEOs on the topic, the course of action that they are taking, and how they evaluate risks and opportunities. For these purposes, we implemented a qualitative methodology based on interviews to 24 Portuguese CEOs and used thematic analysis to explore them. Our findings reveal that, although Portuguese CEOs are aware of this trend, they acknowledge both risks and opportunities, and their activism in still incipient. Plus, they strongly believe that CEO activism must be aligned with the values and mission of the organization they represent. Finally, Portuguese CEOs are convict on activism being genuine, and therefore first implemented within the organization, which is where most of them focus their action. Our work provides an original mapping of the CEO activism landscape in Portugal and an insightful discussion of the CEO’s perspective on this growing phenomenon.

Mediatized contemporary political communication is defined by a high degree of personalization of politics and leaderization of communication. In this context hyper-leaders emerge as a new form of political leadership embracing these features. The purpose of the paper is to develop the concept of digital hyper leader as transformational leader (Gabardo 2019) by identifying what digital leadership communication styles they adopt. To do that, a content analysis of 600 posts and 600 tweets published by ten Italian politicians or hyper-leaders has been conducted. The content analysis has been based on a codebook operationalizing four different leadership styles considering 17 variables. The main findings showed that there isn’t a common approach to social media, and each politician has some tendencies that distinguish him or her from the other competitors. However, it is possible to say that a formal lexicon and reposts do not generate a high level of engagement in the public. Images and videos showing a political leader being supported by his followers or interacting with them can generate a high level of engagement instead. The contribution unfolds digital political communication and leadership studies to understand how Italian Hyper leader use social media and with what types of content as a form of digital leadership communication.

Purpose of research and research gap:

Strategic Positioning or Branding of CEOs, CFOs, and other executives (CxO) are communicative practices that have gained momentum in the last years, especially in the context of digital media and social networking sites. With scholars conducting a rapidly growing number of studies on the phenomenon from different fields, such as communication, marketing, management, or sociology, a wide variety of conceptualizations, definitions, and results need to be systematically reviewed, structured, and presented to move the field forward.

Theoretical approach and background:

This study draws upon approaches from personalization, positioning, and image and branding literature.

Research questions:

RQs address, across disciplines, the status and evolution of the academic area, the conceptualizations in scholarship, and the mapping of findings and results of empirical work.

Methods (for empirical studies):

Systematic literature review of initially 3,247 search hits from four academic databases.

Preliminary findings:

Work-in-progress study; so far, a rapid growth in the number of publications is observable with a detectable time lag between different disciplines, with different reasonings, theoretical foundations and stated target outcomes.

Originality and innovation:

This submission moves public relations research and other fields concerned with communication from/by/with business leaders forward in that this is the first large-scale interdisciplinary systematic literature review of the issue.