How to (and How Not To) Assess the Integrity of Managers

This article concerns how to evaluate the integrity of managers, with an emphasis on identifying those with low integrity. After defining our terms, we review leadership research showing that subordinate perceptions of their manager’s integrity determine how much they trust their manager which, in turn, influences their attitudes and performance. Next we evaluate a common method for assessing the integrity of managers. This method defines integrity as a leadership competency and measures it using coworker ratings of observed ethical behavior. We found that these behavioral ratings suggested only a negligible proportion of managers may have integrity issues and did not distinguish highfrom low-performing managers. We then propose an alternative method based on subordinate expectations about the likelihood that their boss would behave unethically. This method suggested that a much larger proportion of managers may have integrity issues and did distinguish highfrom low-performing managers. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for assessing integrity in practice and urge the leadership field to seriously consider the prevalence and impact of managerial misconduct.