This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: When a major company's CEO goes through a messy divorce or is arrested for drunk driving, investors often get nervous, worried that the executive's personal struggles will dent their returns. But most people hardly notice when a chief marketing officer has similar personal problems.
However, the impact on the company could also be significant. University of Mississippi marketing professor Cong Feng researched the issue to explore how a chief marketing officer's personal life can seep into their performance. "I think the CMO plays a very unique and important role in organizations because people consider them as the customer representative in the top management team," Feng said.
"So they have the responsibility to have a constant exchange and communication with all external stakeholders." The Ole Miss researcher recently published an analysis of this issue in the October volume of the Journal of Business Research. The article includes a role-specific framework to help explain how an executive's personal life may affect job performance, both positively and negatively. This research is important because executives do not leave their humanity at the door, said Barry Babin, chair of the Department of Marketing, Analytics and Professional Sales.
"Feng's work gives researchers and organizations a thoughtful way to understand those potential spillovers without treating them as personal failings," he said. "The study does not argue that a CMO's private life automatically harms or improves performance. "Instead, it offers a rigorous framework for asking how different kinds of life transitions may shape marketing decisions and for identifying the organizational support that can help preserve both employee well-being and marketing effectiveness." Feng developed four categories to link life events and tie them to specific marketing capability outcomes, using the acronym SIGN: "Other scholars could use available executive records and conduct interviews to really study all of those life events, issues and problems in greater detail," he said.
Feng considered 34 private life events, including marriage, childbirth, divorce and deaths of close family members, dividing them into the four categories. These private life events are likely to influence a person's work, Feng said. For example, divorce may cause grief, which drains energy and causes tension.
"If they don't have sufficient energy, they may miss or overlook some of the market trends," he said. "And that will affect how effective the campaign could potentially be." When a CMO experiences legal trouble, such as a DUI charge, it could stain how customers think about the company. Even minor legal issues that never reach the public eye could still have an impact.
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