Thursday, September 26, 2002

Follow Up on the Business Integrity Question

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was going to email the author of the Harvard Business Review article about Managerial Integrity and its effects on employee morale and business performance. (See the post from Sept. 24.)

One of the questions that I asked Dr. Simons was

"...In conducting the survey for Manager Integrity, were you able to control for other Managerial mishaps? In other words, could it be possible that the Managers who didn't walk the talk--ALSO didn't perform up to par in other managerial functions such as providing appropriate levels of praise and/or helping to make their employees feel valued/appreciated? Often a poor manager is a poor manager in more than one area. Was there a way to account for that in your study?..."

Dr. Simons responded promptly,

Tony Simons said:
>>The numbers used in the reported study averaged employee perceptions through the whole hotel -- so, it was employee perceptions of multiple managers. that makes sense because managers at a given workplace tend to develop certain norms. are managers of low BI (business integrity) likely to slip up in other areas as well? probably. In fact, when i asked employees about BI, they would often respond with tales of delayed performance reviews, poor employees who were not appropriately dealt with, and so on. since most managers "preach" meritocracy, deviations from that would likely show up as BI problems. I see BI as the hub of many potential managerial deficiencies. That is why the link was so strong.<<>>...another interesting issue. i tend to believe, though i have not yet demonstrated it, that people who over-promise end up worse off than those who never promise at all. i think that over-promising is epidemic in the current business environment as managers strive to appear sophisticated. as for your friend -- she was successful.... but wouldn't she have been more successful, at least in maintaining supportive long-term working relationships, if she had not generated a string of disappointed employees? <<>What do you think?

Email me at bncarvin@nobscot.com.

Beth C.

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