Robust CEO Activism and Two-Sided Alignment: How Elon Musk Gained (and Lost) Legitimacy in the Polarized U.S. News Media Landscape

Based on a longitudinal case study of Elon Musk’s sociopolitical activism (2013–2022), we examine the characteristics of chief executive officer (CEO) activism that may enable a CEO to gain legitimacy in an ideologically polarized news media environment. Our study uncovered that, across three phases, Musk’s activism only yielded legitimacy across polarized liberal and conservative news media outlets in the United States in Episode II (2016–2019), whereas in Episodes I (2013–2015) and III (2020–2022), his activism was only aligned with the ideologies and values of one side of the polarized audience (with liberal audiences in Episode I and with conservative audiences in Episode III) but misaligned with the other side. Utilizing inductive theory building and drawing from research on robust action, we develop new theory that distinguishes the influence of what we refer to as robust versus non-robust CEO activism on polarized audiences. Robust CEO activism is constituted by multivocal and diplomatic types of activism, whereas non-robust activism entails univocal and provocative activism. We suggest that robust (rather than non-robust) CEO activism induces ideologically polarized audiences to evaluate a corporate leader coherently and favorably based on a legitimation mechanism which we refer to as two-sided alignment. Our study makes important contributions to different streams of literature and develops normative implications for political conceptions of responsible and ethical leadership.