Behavioral integrity (BI) is the alignment pattern between an actor’s words and deeds as perceived by another person. Employees’ perception that their leader’s actions and words are consistent leads to desirable workplace outcomes. Although BI is a powerful concept, the role of leader referents, the relationship between perceived BI of different referents, and the process by which BI affects outcomes are unclear. Our purpose is to elaborate upon this process and clarify the role of different leader referents in determining various (...) outcomes. To understand the impact of referents, we explicitly compared the BIs of two leader referents: senior management and supervisor. In contrast to previous research findings where supervisory BI was found to have a stronger relationship with outcomes than senior management, we find that both referents are important. However, their impact varies based upon the outcome studied. Only senior management BI predicted organizational commitment, while senior management BI, supervisory BI and supervisory trust predicted organizational cynicism. Only trust in supervisor, and not supervisory BI, impacted organizational citizenship behaviors. When senior management is the referent, trust and not BI might play an important role for outcomes that require extensive employee investments, such as organizational commitment. In contrast, when the outcome measured does not require employee investments, BI might have a direct impact on the outcome. We also uncovered that trust in supervisor substantially influences the trust employees have in their senior management. (shrink)

Drawing on the social exchange theory and research on leadership influences, we developed and inspected a multilevel model to test the conditions and mechanisms through which a leader’s behavioral integrity deters workplace ostracism. We used trust as a mediator and the narcissistic personality of a leader as a boundary condition in the connection between a LBI and WO. Data were collected from 249 employees working in different five- and four-star hotels in Pakistan over three time lags. The statistical results revealed (...) that a LBI reduces WO. Additionally, a LBI has an indirect effect on WO through interpersonal trust. We did not find statistical support for the moderating role of the narcissistic personality of a leader in the relationship between a LBI and WO. Implications, along with limitations and future research directions, are also discussed. (shrink)

Existing studies mainly explored the detrimental effect of employee credit claiming, and little is known about how leader credit claiming can affect employees. Based on affective events theory and relative deprivation theory, we explore how leader credit claiming affects employee work outcomes by the research methods of literature review, interview, and empirical questionnaire. With a sample of 418 matched leader–employee pairs from a large manufacturing company, we find that leader credit claiming influences employee work outcomes through the mediating role of (...) employee anger and perceived unfairness. Additionally, we determine that leader credit-claiming attribution has a moderating influence on the relationship between credit claiming and anger and between credit claiming and perceived unfairness. The results support all hypotheses. Furthermore, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. (shrink)

Leaders, particularly new leaders, seek to establish high levels of trust, as it has been associated with higher levels of effectiveness and group outcomes. This study is designed to understand how trust changes and develops for leaders in a new role and the implications of that change. Although calls for research on trust over time have been made for the past 2 decades, our knowledge of this phenomenon is still quite limited. The findings indicate that leader and unit performance is (...) a function not only of absolute trust level, but is also affected by the direction and magnitude of change in trust across time periods, with the highest levels of effectiveness being associated with leaders who exhibited an increase in trust from the group over time. The data also suggest that the direction and rate at which trust grew was determined by initial expectations and transformational leadership behaviors. (shrink)

The value of a company’s ethical reputation has become a focal point for management researchers. We seek to join this conversation and extend the research centered on a firm’s ethical reputation. We accomplish this by shifting our focus away from its impact on external stakeholders to its impact on internal stakeholders. To this end, we rely on signaling theory to explain why a firm’s ethical reputation matters to its employees in an effort to bridge the macro–micro research gap. Across two (...) studies, we propose and demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation impacts employee subjective career success in form of career opportunities and work–life balance. Given our signaling theory framework, we also identify and explain when two industry-level characteristics operate as boundary conditions that distort a firm’s ethical reputation signaling properties. Specifically, the results demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation is positively related to employees’ perceptions of career opportunities and work–life balance. The results of our studies also demonstrate that the relatively high levels of industry competition and industry regulation weaken the positive impact of a firm’s ethical reputation on career opportunities and work–life balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper presents conceptual arguments to suggest that trust within organizations and trustworthiness of organizations are built through ethical governance mechanisms. We ground our analysis of trust, trustworthiness, and stewardship in the business literature and provide the context of business school governance as the focus of our paper. We present a framework that highlights the importance of knowledge, resources, performance focus, transparency, authentic caring, social capital and citizenship expectations in creating a basis for the ethical governance of organizations.