Strategic leader reputation: a review and research agenda

Kamp, Lena; Graf-Vlachy, Lorenz

Abstract

Strategic leaders’ reputation plays a pivotal role in shaping organizations and their success. Numerous authors across disciplines have begun to study strategic leader reputation, leading to the results being scattered across different literatures. We perform a systematic literature review to synthesize the literature across the different academic subfields of business administration and economics. First, we establish a multidimensional definition of strategic leader reputation. Next, we structure and synthesize the relevant literature on three types of strategic leaders: CEOs, other top executives, and directors. We structured our study around three overarching themes: the antecedents of strategic leader reputation, the consequences of such reputation, and moderating effects. We present these themes in a coherent and comprehensive framework, accounting for different theoretical lenses, contexts, and empirical methods. We consequently contribute by providing a holistic perspective on strategic leader reputation in organizational research. Finally, we develop a comprehensive roadmap for future research, specifically highlighting measurement issues and the question of the stability of reputation.

Keywords
Strategic leader reputation; CEO reputation; Director reputation; Systematic literature review; Reputation measurement