Behavioral Integrity: The Perceived Alignment Between Managers' Words and Deeds as a Research Focus

This paper focuses on the perceived pattern of alignment between a manager’s words and deeds, with special attention to promise keeping, and espoused and enacted values. It terms this perceived pattern of alignment “Behavioral Integrity.” The literatures on trust, psychological contracts, and credibility combine to suggest important consequences for this perception, and literatures on hypocrisy, social accounts, social cognition, organizational change, and management fashions suggest key antecedents to it. The resulting conceptual model highlights an issue that is problematic in today’s managerial environment, has important organizational outcomes, and is relatively unstudied. (Trust; Psychological Contracts; Credibility; Fashions) A rapidly growing body of literature recognizes that trust plays a central role in employment relationships. Though scholars have varied somewhat in their specific definitions of trust, there is substantial agreement that a perception that another’s words tend to align with his deeds is critically important for the development of trust (e.g., McGregor 1967). Credibility has received recent attention in the practitioner literature (Kouzes and Posner 1993) as a critical managerial attribute that is all too often undermined by managers’ word-deed misalignment. In a similar vein, psychological contracts research has proliferated in recent years, due in part to its relevance in the recent managerial environment of widespread downsizing and restructuring because these processes are often understood by workers as violations of employers’ commitments (Robinson 1996). This paper contends that the perceived pattern of managers’ word-deed alignment or misalignment—with regard to a variety of issues—is itself an important organizational phenomenon because it is a critical antecedent to trust and credibility. This perception is affected not only by management’s adherence to psychological contracts, but also by phenomena that are less immediate or close to the employee, such as managers’ behavioral adherence to espoused values, mission statements, and other shortand long-term commitments and self-descriptions. Focusing attention on the perception of managers’ word-deed alignment highlights several organizational phenomena as likely sources of influence upon both the managers’ actual word-deed alignment and employees’ perception of it. Further, this focus generates testable research propositions and practical suggestions for managing employee trust in management and the consequent organizational outcomes. This paper will argue that this perception, which we term “behavioral integrity,” warrants further study because of its central conceptual role and because of its potential for managerial prescription. Trust has become widely recognized as a central outcome and antecedent in organizational studies. Trust, however, is a very complex construct that is variously conceived to include a wide range of cognitions, emotions, attitudes, and actions (Kramer 1999). The psychological contract is powerful in its relevance and its implications, but applies only to reciprocal commitments that are proximal to the employee—it does not address the far wider range of perceived managerial word-deed misalignments which, this paper argues, seriously undermine trust in management relationships. Behavioral integrity (BI) is proposed here as a central but manageable antecedent to trust that describes a wider range of organizational experiences than the psychological contract. The present work hopes to promote and structure inquiry into this realm. Figure 1 shows a model of the conceptual linkages that will be argued here. This paper will first draw from literatures on trust, credibility, and psychological contracts to delineate the construct of behavioral integrity and its organizational consequences (Figure 1, Block A). As BI TONY SIMONS Behavioral Integrity ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 13, No. 1, January–February 2002 19 Figure 1 Conceptual Diagram of Antecedents and Consequences of Behavioral Integrity is a subjectively perceived phenomenon, literatures on social cognition and social accounts describe the conditions under which actual managerial word-deed alignment or misalignment will be perceived and interpreted in such a way as to influence ascriptions of behavioral integrity (Figure 1, Block B). Finally, literatures on institutional tasks, managerial fashions, and organizational change will be used to consider causes of actual managerial word-deed alignment or misalignment, which in turn serves as the basis for perception (Figure 1, Block C). As can be inferred from the literatures invoked, this model crosses levels of analysis, from institutional and organizational forces to manager responses to employee perceptions of and reactions to managers and back to organizational outcomes. Construct Definition Behavioral Integrity (BI) Is the Perceived Pattern of Alignment Between an Actor’s Words and Deeds. It entails both the perceived fit between espoused and enacted values, and perceived promise-keeping. Thus, it includes the perception of behavioral adherence to psychological contracts, as well as to mission statements, corporate value statements, descriptions of individual values, priorities, or management styles, and simple follow-through on expressed commitments. In an organizational context, BI is typically conceived as employees’ perceptions of their managers’ pattern of word-deed alignment, but applications in other contexts are readily conceivable. Because BI is a perceived pattern of alignment or misalignment, generally based on observations over time, it entails internal attributions and may be considered an ascribed “trait.” In other words, BI is the extent to which employees perceive that their managers tend to represent themselves and their motivating values accurately in their communications with employees. BI is the extent to which employees believe a manager “walks her talk,” and, conversely, it reflects the extent to which they see her as “talking her walk.” The Random House College Dictionary (1975, p. 692) defines integrity as “adherence to moral and ethical principles.” As defined here, though, BI does not consider the morality of principles, but rather focuses on the extent to which stated principles are seen as aligning with actions. Thus, a colleague who openly advocates self-interest, rather than the common good, as a basis for personal actions might be despised if one does not share his values. However, such a colleague might be seen as having high behavioral integrity if one can see clear alignment between word and deed. One might not support the colleague’s actions or seek vulnerability to him, but at least one knows that he means what he says. The behavioral TONY SIMONS Behavioral Integrity 20 ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 13, No. 1, January–February 2002 Table 1 Brief Construct Definitions and Interrelationships Behavioral Integrity Ascribed trait, describing a perceived pattern of alignment between another’s words and deeds. BI is a present-time trait whose ascription draws on history. Trust (from Mayer et al. 1995, p. 712) The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party. While BI looks back to the past, trust looks forward toward future decisions. By this definition, one would expect BI to be one of a few key antecedents to trust. Credibility (from O’Keefe 1990, p. 130) A perceiver’s assessment of believability, or of whether a given speaker is likely to provide messages that will be reliable guides to belief and behavior. This construct, widely discussed in persuasion, marketing, and legal literatures, largely overlaps with trust, and may be considered as a subclass of trust. Credibility, like trust, is forward looking. Like trust, one would expect credibility to be affected by BI and other factors. Psychological Contracts