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

Résumé

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.