Abstract
In this study, we focused on the celebrity CEO and proposed the main effect that celebrity CEO has a positive impact on their peer companies’ behavior and subsequent R&D investment. Further, we proposed the moderating effects of similarities between celebrity and peer CEOs’ characteristics, similarities between celebrity CEO’s company and peer company’s firm characteristics, and the peer company CEO’s power on the relationship between celebrity CEO and the peer firms’ CEO and R&D investment. We built our arguments on the social influence perspective and proposed the hypotheses regarding celebrity CEOs’ role model effect on the peer companies’ R&D investment. We mainly focus on the antecedent condition of social influence—social identity and the reaction after being influenced—social learning. The hypotheses are tested in the Chinese context with the matched data from “The Best CEOs of The Year” published by Forbes China from 2012 to 2017. We attempt to contribute to the literature about celebrity CEO and social influence perspective.
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