Rumor has it: CEO gender and response to organizational denials.

The ambiguous credibility of online allegations can pose a significant threat to an organization's reputation, relationships with stakeholders, and future performance. As a result, addressing false or misleading allegations has emerged as an important priority among corporate executives. In this research, we examine how CEO gender influences the effectiveness of different types of denial responses in the wake of rumor crises. We find that, after reading damaging allegations about an organization, consumers react more favorably to denials issued by male versus female CEOs. We argue that this is attributable to the dominance that characterizes denial responses, which results in a greater (negative) expectancy violation for female (vs. male) CEOs issuing such statements. Such violations result in lower trust in, and less willingness to do business with, organizations led by women (vs. men) who issue a denial response. We show that these relationships are moderated by increased prescriptive agency (i.e., clarified denials) and the attribution of the response (i.e., to the CEO vs. organization). Taken together, our findings have implications for theory on agentic characteristics, crisis communication, and female leadership, as well as practical implications for how all organizations can adopt more effective crisis responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Choosing sides: CEO gender and investor support for activist campaigns.

Recent evidence suggests that female-led firms are more likely to be targeted by activist investors. We examine how Chief Executive Officer (CEO) gender influences retail investors' responses to proxy contests. We find that these investors are more likely to support-through their proxy voting behavior-campaigns that target female-led versus male-led firms, despite the fact that retail investors evaluate female and male CEOs similarly. We show that this apparent discrepancy is a function of how subjective ratings mask stereotype-influenced judgments, consistent with the shifting standards model (SSM). Respondents use lower standards to evaluate female versus male CEOs. This difference becomes apparent when externally-anchored judgments are employed, such as when investors are asked to choose sides in a proxy contest. Correspondingly, activists are judged as relatively more competent when targeting female-led firms. Our findings contribute to research on CEO gender and activism. In doing so, our research also introduces the SSM to the investor decision-making literature, thereby enriching the discussion about what mechanisms underpin the less favorable investment outcomes female-led firms can experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

To be or not to be sorry? How CEO gender impacts the effectiveness of organizational apologies.

We examine whether consumer reactions to a product failure are affected by the gender of the CEO to whom the organization's postfailure communications are attributed. We find that CEO gender and response type interact to affect both consumers' perceptions of the organization, and their propensity to purchase from it following a product failure. Specifically, consumers' reactions to unqualified apologies versus other types of accommodative responses do not differ when these responses are attributed to male CEOs. However, unqualified apologies are generally more successful for female CEOs than alternative responses. We show that such differences can be attenuated by increasing perceptions of a female CEO as agentic. We attribute these findings to consumers' perceptions of how fairly they have been treated by an organization in the wake of a failure (i.e., interactional fairness). Our findings contribute to the crisis management literature by demonstrating how personal characteristics can shape the effectiveness of organizations' crisis response strategies, thereby highlighting one implication of CEOs' growing public visibility. In doing so, our findings also advance research on female CEOs and how gender-based expectations may impact organizational outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

How leader gender influences external audience response to organizational failures.

Across 3 studies, we examine how leader gender affects external audiences' reactions to organizational failures, and under what conditions such effects are likely to occur. We find that leader gender and failure type (ethical, competence) interact to affect individuals' perceptions of, and propensity to support, an organization after a failure. People respond more negatively to ethical failures when an organization has a female versus a male leader. In contrast, competence failures generally elicit a less negative response for female-led versus male-led organizations. These effects are mediated by trust in the organization. We also show that these relationships are moderated by factors that influence evaluators' communal perceptions of leaders (e.g., leader descriptions) or their expectations regarding organizational competence (e.g., gender congruence). Our findings contribute to the literatures on female leaders, organizational failures, and the influence of norms on evaluator judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).