Meaning of integrity from the upper echelons’ perspective

Recent corporate disasters have brought leader integrity into limelight and it has become a popular topic for discussion in scholarly literature and popular press. Integrity has been a subject of discussion and debate amongst scholars for a long time, however, there appears to be no consensus in literature on the meaning of integrity and what does it entail. Some scholars equate integrity with actions that demonstrate high moral and ethical standards, for example De George (1993); others like Jensen (2009) call it an ethically and morally neutral term and equate it with the law of gravity. Due to the ambiguities and uncertainties, integrity in management remains a desired and contested topic. The scant empirical research focusses on the followers perceptions of leaders’ integrity, but what does integrity mean to the leaders themselves is not known. It is in this context that the current study aims to draw from the organizational leaders’ understanding, conceptualization and application of integrity in the workplace. How is integrity socially constructed by organizational leaders? What does it mean to them to be acting with integrity in the organizational context? The study employs qualitative research methodology using case study approach and purposive sampling method to select senior executives in the banking industry in South Australia. Data was collected using in depth one on one interviews with the participating informants. The interviews were semi-structured and evolved organically to get the information necessary to answer the research questions. The conversations were analysed using thematic analysis technique to get emic insights into the executives’ view of integrity and how it was applied in the workplace. The findings indicate that for the sample of informants, integrity is about ethical behavior which was expressed by the executives as, ‘doing the right thing’, where the ‘right thing’ meant ethical action. The findings are not supportive of the notion of integrity as a morally neutral concept. The findings of this study are to be used for scoping a larger study aimed at developing an inclusive and unified definition of integrity.