EV-0003
When managers' words match their deeds, profitability follows
Simons, T., McLean Parks, J., & Tomlinson, E. C. (2018). Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 59(3), 257–274 · Source
What this entitles us to say
Across 76 hotels and roughly 6,800 employees, the degree to which staff saw their managers' words match their deeds was associated with lower voluntary turnover, higher guest satisfaction, and materially higher unit profitability — with behavioral integrity accounting for about 13% of the variance in profitability between hotels.
What it found
Survey data from about 6,800 workers across 76 same-branded US hotels, combined with operational and financial records. Where employees rated managers highly on behavioral integrity — the alignment of what they say with what they do — the chain saw better guest satisfaction, lower voluntary turnover, and higher profit. Behavioral integrity accounted for roughly 13% of the variance in profitability across hotels, operating through employee trust, commitment, and willingness to give discretionary service effort.
Why it matters here
This is the entry that answers "what's the business case?" — the question every buyer asks and the one the other integrity literature does not address. It also maps almost exactly onto the book's Honesty/Integrity dyad: honesty is what you say, integrity is whether your actions match it. Simons' construct is that dyad, measured from the outside.
It further supports the design decision to make the 360 the leader tier's centerpiece. What predicted profit here was not how managers rated themselves — it was how their people rated them, which is precisely the self-versus-others gap.
The limits
Correlational and cross-sectional in design — it establishes association, not causation, and the arrow could partly run the other way, since profitable units are easier places in which to keep promises. One industry, one branded chain, US only; hospitality is unusually service-intensive, so the size of the effect should not be assumed to transfer to a warehouse or a municipality. And integrity here is measured as employee perception of managers, which is a different construct from an individual's self-assessed character — closer to our 360 than to our self-report.
What we do not say
"Character driven leadership increases profit by 13%." That is not what the number means — it is variance explained, not a return figure, and the study is not about our program. Anyone using it that way should be corrected internally.