CEO Sociopolitical Activism as a Signal of Authentic Leadership to Prospective Employees

Despite evidence on the increasing centrality of moral approaches to leadership for extant employees, management research provides little guidance whether and how prospective employees come draw conclusions about such in their employer choice. Therefore, this paper integrates authentic into signaling theory identify CEO sociopolitical activism—a public costly expression personal political values by a company's highest most visible leader—as an effective signal that is interpreted job seekers evaluate CEOs’ degree leadership. Three experiments, including parallel design causal mediation inferences, field survey support attributions mediate positive impact activism seekers’ attractiveness evaluations This attenuated when activist CEO's espoused are incongruent with those seeker engages due customer pressure rather than convictions. These findings primarily contribute literature For practitioners, identifies unique can brand while cautioning costs might impose companies’ diversity.