The Impact of Prosody and Gestures on Perceived CEO Charisma and Organizational Crisis Communication Outcomes

To minimise reputational damage in the event of a communications crisis, companies need to implement appropriate communications strategies. The CEO as a company's spokesperson and his or her charisma play potentially an important role in this context. Against this background, we conducted a pilot experiment to investigate whether 1) a CEO can build up charisma through nonverbal cues in a video statement, 2) this charisma has positive effects on organizational crisis communication outcomes, and 3) the involvement level is a moderator for these effects. The results show that medium prosodic cues and medium salience of gestures lead to higher perceived CEO charisma, which in turn positively influences consumers' attitudes towards the company, and reduces negative-of-word-mouth intentions during a crisis. This effect is significantly stronger in a low involvement scenario.