A Commentary on Fezzey et al. (2024): Rethinking CEO Activism Through Stakeholder Complexity, Institutional Pressures and Temporal Dynamics

Fezzey et al.'s (2024) CEO Activism Decision Matrix categorizes executive sociopolitical engagement into inactive, symbolic, covert, and substantive strategies based on combinations of communicative and economic power. While this typology effectively conceptualizes structural dimensions of CEO activism, it requires theoretical expansion in three critical areas that would transform the matrix from a static to a dynamic model. This commentary integrates stakeholder salience theory (Mitchell et al., 1997), institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), and process perspectives to demonstrate how these extensions enhance both the explanatory power and practical utility of their framework.