Despite evidence on the increasing centrality of moral approaches to leadership for extant employees, management research provides little guidance on whether and how prospective employees come to draw conclusions about such leadership in their employer choice. Therefore, this paper integrates authentic leadership into signaling theory to identify CEO sociopolitical activism—a public and costly expression of personal political values by a company's highest and most visible leader—as an effective signal that is interpreted by job seekers to evaluate the CEOs’ degree of authentic leadership. Three experiments, including a parallel design for causal mediation inferences, and a field survey support that authentic leadership attributions mediate the positive impact of CEOs’ activism on job seekers’ employer attractiveness evaluations and employer choice. This mediation is attenuated when the activist CEO's espoused political values are incongruent with those of the job seeker and when the CEO engages in activism due to customer pressure rather than personal convictions. These findings primarily contribute to signaling theory and the literature on authentic leadership. For practitioners, the paper identifies a unique leadership signal that can contribute to an employer brand while cautioning about the costs this signal might impose on companies’ diversity.

尽管有证据表明道德方法对现有员工的领导力越来越重要，但管理研究对未来员工是否以及如何得出有关其雇主选择的这种领导力的结论几乎没有提供指导。因此，本文将真实的领导力融入信号理论，以识别 CEO 社会政治行动主义——公司最高和最显眼的领导人公开且代价高昂地表达个人政治价值观——作为求职者解释以评估 CEO 学位的有效信号真正的领导。三个实验，包括因果中介推理的平行设计，一项实地调查支持，真实的领导归因在 CEO 的积极性对求职者的雇主吸引力评估和雇主选择的积极影响中起到了中介作用。当激进的 CEO 所信奉的政治价值观与求职者的价值观不一致时，以及当 CEO 因客户压力而非个人信念而参与激进主义时，这种调解就会减弱。这些发现主要有助于信号理论和关于真实领导的文献。对于从业者而言，该论文确定了一种独特的领导信号，可以为雇主品牌做出贡献，同时警告该信号可能对公司多元化造成的成本。所信奉的政治价值观与求职者的价值观不一致，当 CEO 出于客户压力而非个人信念而采取行动时。这些发现主要有助于信号理论和关于真实领导的文献。对于从业者而言，该论文确定了一种独特的领导信号，可以为雇主品牌做出贡献，同时警告该信号可能对公司多元化造成的成本。所信奉的政治价值观与求职者的价值观不一致，当 CEO 出于客户压力而非个人信念而采取行动时。这些发现主要有助于信号理论和关于真实领导的文献。对于从业者而言，该论文确定了一种独特的领导信号，可以为雇主品牌做出贡献，同时警告该信号可能对公司多元化造成的成本。