International relocations of corporate headquarters: The role of CEOs, shareholders, and the public

International relocations of corporate headquarters (CHQs) often enable firms to realize tax savings, but such savings imply a loss of tax revenues for the domestic government. Although these corporate benefits and societal costs are likely to be valued differently within and across groups of stakeholders, extant research sheds little light on the role of stakeholders in tax-driven CHQ relocations. We aim to offer more insight into that role by focusing on CEOs, shareholders, and the domestic public, and exploring how they influence the occurrence and business consequences of tax-driven CHQ relocations. Specifically, we will analyze how (i) CEO-specific factors, (ii) the composition of a firm’s shareholder base, and (iii) a firm’s public visibility and use of domestic production factors influence the likelihood of a tax-driven CHQ relocation. Furthermore, we will explore how the characteristics of such a relocation—notably its implementation form, its target country, and whether and how it was legitimated by senior management—affect a relocating firm’s legitimacy among the domestic public. To test our hypotheses, we will collect numerical data on all  listed US firms that initiated a tax-driven CHQ relocation and on a matched sample of firms that never initiated such a relocation. We will also collect the US media reports about each intended relocation and code the tone of these reports to capture a relocating firm’s loss of domestic legitimacy.