Integrity in Organizations: Beyond Honesty and Conscientiousness

Abstract

In previous literature on employee selection, leadership, and organizational trust, scholars have identified integrity as a central aspect of work behavior. However, despite important contributions, their work often has confused integrity with other concepts (especially honesty and conscientiousness) and has treated integrity as either a morally neutral or relativistic phenomenon. The philosophy of “Objectivism” solves these problems by providing a definition of integrity that distinguishes the term from related concepts and by integrating integrity into an objective code of morality. I discuss the implications of this perspective for the study of integrity in organizations.