CEO communicators: bibliometric analysis on the role of chief executive officers in institutional communication of organizations in the last 30 years (1993-2022)

Authors

Abstract

This bibliometric analysis examines the evolution of scientific production on the role of the chief executive officers (CEO) as a key spokesperson in the institutional communication in organizations. This is the first quantitative bibliometric study on the topic about the CEOs as key communicators. A total of 156 scientific articles published in Scopus and Web of Science during the last 30 years (1993-2022) were analyzed. Articles, authors, journals and contents were the four aspects studied about the role of CEO communicators. Results show that there is a significant number of scholars interested in the subject, but most of the articles are published in specialized communication and business journals. CEOs are studied with large samples, and executives from the USA are the most researched. Twitter is the most analyzed social network, and, in non-digital communication, studies focus on the oral and written rhetoric of CEOs. The most researched communication content topics are those of external communication and crisis. The findings show a relevant increase of publications about this topic due to factors such as the public exposure of CEOs, the emergence of the Internet and the dialogic potential of social networks. Thus, three major waves of CEO digital communicators are identified: e-CEOs, CEO Bloggers and Social CEOs.

Author Biographies

Giancarlo Saavedra, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain)

Giancarlo Saavedra is a PhD candidate and researcher at the communication research group “Asterisc” at the Department of Communication Studies of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). He holds a master's degree in Strategic Communication in the Risk Society (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain) and a master's degree in Business Administration and Corporate Social Responsibility (Universidade de Vigo, Spain). His research is focused on institutional communication and social media.

 

Paul Capriotti, Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Paul Capriotti is PhD in Communication by the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain). He is Professor of Public Relations and Corporate Communication at Universidad Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). He is author of several articles in international journals like Public Relations Review, Journal of Communication Management, Business & Society, Corporate Communications, Communication & Society, International Journal of Information Management, among others. He is guest professor at different Spanish and Latin-American Universities.

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Published

2024-12-31

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 39 (2024): Estudos em Comunicação

Section

Artigos

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.

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