Unpacking Political Ideology: CEO Social and Economic Ideologies, Strategic Decision-Making Processes, and Corporate Entrepreneurship

Abstract

We integrate political psychology and upper echelons research to introduce an alternative conceptualization of executive political ideology by separating the two distinct ideologies: social and economic ideologies. We theorize and test how the two ideologies exert distinct effects on a critical strategic outcome—corporate entrepreneurship. We examine this contention in Iran, a political context that sharply deviates from the exclusively studied U.S. context. We find that social and economic conservatism exert opposing effects on CE through distinct strategic decision-making processes; CEO social conservatism positively affects CE by promoting intuitive strategic decision-making, whereas CEO economic conservatism negatively affects CE by impairing cooperative strategic decision- making. These results highlight the need to separate social and economic ideologies especially in non-U.S. contexts and inform the underlying strategic decision-making processes through which executive ideology shapes strategic behaviors. The promising results also underscore the importance of examining the strategic implications of executive political ideology in diverse political contexts that differ from the U.S. context.