What do celebrity CEOs look like?

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) such as Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Richard Branson, and Indra Nooyi are widely considered global sensations, where mentions of their names immediately elicit attention. Indeed, these CEOs garner a disproportionately high amount of public attention creating “positive emotional responses from stakeholder audience” (Rindova, Pollock, & Hayward, 2006: 51). Research on CEO celebrity has emerged to capture our fascination with these leaders and is an intriguing dimension of social status among the corporate elite (Cho et al., 2016; Malmendier & Tate, 2009). Celebrity status is conferred to CEOs through positive social reinforcement by prominent business media outlets (Lee et al., 2020). Firms led by celebrity CEOs in turn, are expected to enjoy reputational benefits and higher financial performance (Treadway et al., 2009). Unsurprisingly, celebrity CEOs also benefit from their status (Hayward et al., 2004), as they are often heralded as more capable strategic leaders and tend to command higher remuneration (Graffin, Boivie, & Carpenter, 2013).