As CEO activism has been on the rise for the past few years, as Forbes reports, Georg Wernicke, professor at HEC Paris, recently published a study focusing on the effect this practice on society at large, which actually is not always positive for democracy. He makes a distinction between the "liberal" and the "republican" perspectives: the former considers these actions as good for democracy as long as they are lawful, while the latter argues that they should take the quality of debate and fairness into account such to be deemed positive. He thus provides criteria CEOs should consider before taking a stance on a political topic.