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What is in it for Me? Middle Manager Behavioral Integrity and Performance

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Abstract

We propose that middle managers’ perceived organizational support enhances their performance through the sequential mediation of their behavioral integrity and follower organizational citizenship behaviors. We test our model with data collected from middle managers, their direct subordinates, and their direct superiors at 18 hotel properties in China. The current study’s findings contribute to the existing literature on perceived organizational support and behavioral integrity. They also add a practical self-interest argument for middle managers’ efforts to maintain their word-action alignment by demonstrating that middle manager behavioral integrity positively affects middle managers’ own task performance ratings, both directly and via its positive effect on subordinates’ organizational citizenship behaviors.

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Notes

  1. http://classweb.uh.edu/eisenberger/perceived-organizational-support/.

  2. The composite reliability values of the three-parameter direct subordinate OCBO behaviors and three-parameter direct subordinate OCBI behaviors variables (0.77 and 0.86, respectively) were higher than the 0.70 threshold, the AVE values (0.54 and 0.68, respectively) were also higher than the 0.50 threshold, and all six SRW values were greater than the 0.50 threshold with SRW values varying between 0.61 and 0.92.

  3. Note that in contrast with the above “possible rival explanation” and consistent with the current study’s assertions, the results of auxiliary analyses showed that middle manager reported perceived organizational support had a direct, positive effect on direct subordinate-rated middle manager behavioral integrity, while middle manager-rated direct subordinate organizational citizenship behaviors were not related to subordinate-rated middle manager behavioral integrity.

  4. While social desirability is certainly likely to inflate respondents’ ratings of the middle manager’s integrity, it is difficult to conceive how it would inflate the association between those ratings and the middle managers’ ratings of the follower’s citizenship behaviors or between those and the superior’s ratings of the middle manager’s task performance. Were these variables measured by a single respondent in a survey, social desirability could indeed be a factor. The fact that we use different informants for the different variables in the model substantially mitigates the possibility that a single intrapsychic phenomenon, such as social desirability, will uniformly inflate the variables within each case so as to yield a spurious association.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lausanne Hospitality Research Center in Partnership with STR Global, Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, HES-SO, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Route de Cojonnex 18, 1000, Lausanne 25, Switzerland

    Sean A. Way

  2. School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, 538 Statler Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Tony Simons

  3. Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Hannes Leroy

  4. Mendoza College of Business, The University of Notre Dame, 232 Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    Elizabeth A. Tuleja

Authors
  1. Sean A. Way
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  2. Tony Simons
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  3. Hannes Leroy
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  4. Elizabeth A. Tuleja
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sean A. Way.

Appendix

Appendix

figure a

Hypothesized structural model (listwise deletion). Note In addition to the standardized direct effect estimates presented above, middle manager (direct subordinate-rated) behavioral integrity had a positive, indirect effect on middle manager (direct superior-rated) task performance; this standardized indirect effect estimate (β = 0.12, p < 0.05) is presented in parenthesis in the “Appendix.” N = 78, † p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01

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Way, S.A., Simons, T., Leroy, H. et al. What is in it for Me? Middle Manager Behavioral Integrity and Performance. J Bus Ethics 150, 765–777 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3204-9

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