This summary is provided by the IPR Organizational Communication Research Center 

Dr. Moonhee Cho, Dr. Sifan Xu, and Dr. Brandon Boatwright researched the factors associated with CEO advocacy and how these factors influence the sense of belonging amongst employees. CEO advocacy occurs when an organization’s top executive embraces or participates in political and social issues. 

An online survey of 429 U.S. employees was conducted in March, 2020.

Key findings include:

— Employees felt a greater sense of belonging when their values aligned with the values of the CEO.
— When employees’ values aligned with leadership at an average level or below, they perceived the CEO’s views to be less representative of the organization as a whole.
— When employees’ values were highly aligned with those of the CEO, these employees still felt a greater sense of belonging to the organization even when they didn’t think the CEO’s views were representative of the organization as a whole.
— Greater employee accessibility to information about CEO advocacy slightly magnified the positive effects of their value alignment with the CEO.

Find the original report here.

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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