Abstract Research Summary Substantial evidence indicates that leaders are perceived through a lens of gender bias, but what mitigates such bias remains underexplored. Examining men and women in creative, project‐based leadership roles, we integrate insights from role congruity and gender bias literatures to predict how project unconventionality and leader gender affect external perceptions of project quality. We argue that prejudice against female leaders is strongest for conventional projects due to the established presence of male‐centric prototypical projects which induce bias, but that project unconventionality weakens this bias by distancing the project from these male‐centric prototypes. We find support for this using a sample of 1,414 films by 32 major film studios (1990–2014) across three measures of perceived quality: moviegoer ratings, critic ratings, and film awards. Managerial Summary Despite recent strides in gender equality, women are still highly underrepresented in leadership positions across all kinds of organizations. This is partly because society still views women as “less fit for leadership,” and this both prevents the appointment of female leaders and damages audience perceptions of the few projects that women do lead. Surprisingly, we know little about how to address this bias. In this study, we predict that in terms of how audiences rate the quality of a project, “unconventional” projects are less susceptible to gender bias. After examining 1,414 feature films from 32 major studios, we find that whether audiences rate a female‐directed film poorly depends on its conventionality—conventional films favor male directors, while unconventional films favor female directors.

Activities that hazard the possibility of increased scrutiny are an unavoidable reality for many firms. While managers may face the need to engage in these activities, there is little research on when managers decide to do so. Existing theoretical perspectives on status quo deviations have not sufficiently addressed how managers order the firm’s essential activities that differ primarily in terms of the scrutiny those activities engender. Drawing from concepts in the accounting and political science literatures, we advance a “scrutiny-bundling” perspective that suggests that firms engage in scrutiny-hazarding action in the wake of social disapproval, assessed in this study via negative media coverage. We further theorize that a strong linkage between the focus of media coverage and the specific scrutiny-hazarding action exacerbates this relationship. We then contend that managers at firms that are either large in size or that perform well relative to their aspirations are less sensitive to social disapproval, and are therefore less likely to engage in scrutiny bundling. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 100 firms in the upstream petroleum industry and find general support for our theories.

Firms can use a range of proactive impression management behaviors to reduce the impact of a negative event on firm outcomes. When a negative event is unpredictable, we theorize that firms can engage in ostentatious behaviors that display the firm’s affluence and robust resource base. We term these behaviors “flaunting,” and we present a two-part model that investigates how flaunting can reduce the impact of an unpredictable negative event on firm outcomes and why it is effective at doing so. In part one, we theorize how flaunting can generate net positive stakeholder group evaluations by enhancing distinctiveness among stakeholder groups. In part two, we theorize that the net positive stakeholder group evaluations can buffer the impact of an unpredictable negative event on firm outcomes. We also argue that this buffering effect is amplified when the flaunting firm actively manages stakeholder group distinctiveness. Thus, while flaunting can be both off-putting and enticing to different stakeholder groups, we theorize that courting the love of some may be worth the cost of being disliked (or worse) by others.

Abstract Research Summary While previous organizational impression management (OIM) research focuses on highlighting firms in a favorable light, we explore CEOs' use of “strategic negativity” to manage expectations. We draw on OIM's psychological roots to predict that despite pressure to “be positive,” when CEOs perceive stakeholders are motivated to raise their expectations and have an opportunity to do so, CEOs strategically use negativity to counteract this anticipated expectation increase. We test our predictions on 7330 quarterly earnings calls from 370 publicly traded firms (2008–2019), examining how the “motive” of a positive material earnings surprise and “opportunity” of a new fiscal year jointly increase CEO negativity in prepared remarks. We elaborate the wide applicability of strategic negativity, the “other side” of the OIM phenomenon. Managerial Summary In contrast to the prevailing view that CEOs usually “positively spin” the firm's situation to stakeholders, we investigate how CEOs strategically use negativity to counteract stakeholder optimism, provided CEOs perceive expectations are likely to rocket upward. We argue that positive news represents a “motive” and a chance to reflect represents an “opportunity,” and that together they risk raising expectations. Analyzing 7330 quarterly earnings calls of 370 companies (2008–2019), we specifically examined how both (1) a positive earnings surprise and (2) a new fiscal year force CEOs out of their positivity comfort zone and encourage them to be strategically negative in earnings call remarks, to try to lower stakeholder expectations. Our results support this view and pave the way for future research.