The Christian Working Woman - When Integrity is Challenged at Work

Presented by Lauren Stibgen Integrity is a big word in business. It is found in codes of conduct, employee handbooks, and job descriptions as a catch all word. I was curious about how much the word integrity shows up in job descriptions alone. According to ChatGPT, this word appears one to three times in postings for leadership, finance, healthcare, ministry, nonprofit, and executive roles. But what does it mean? Those who have been around for a while know I love my Merriam-Webster dictionary as a launching point. According to Merriam-Webster, integrity has three definitions1. firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility. an unimpaired condition: soundness. the quality or state of being complete or undivided: completeness. As always, the problem with any dictionary definition is it is open to a wide lens of interpretation. Whose moral code is the right moral code? Surely, we have a legal standard within business laws that are guardrails, but this doesn’t stop people from having a lack of integrity. It just establishes the standard by which we measure a consequence. As for an unimpaired condition, we have building codes for this to make sure the structural integrity of a building or a bridge is intact. But again, this can be challenged by builders who skirt the codes to save some money! And, what about the state of being complete or undivided? You may hear someone say the opinion written by someone has integrity—meaning the paper is complete. The problem with integrity? Sometimes it is high and sometimes it is low. Like the temperature variance here in the Midwest between January and July, integrity can be wildly off! So, how can we distill down? In an article entitled “Integrity” from the Harvard Business Review, Karen Christensen interviewed Harvard professor, Michael Jensen who says, “Integrity is a matter of a person’s word—nothing more and nothing less.”2 Like the third definition of being complete or undivided, keeping one’s word is about doing what you say you are going to do. He separates integrity from the concepts of morality and ethics stating morality and ethics are “normative concepts in that they deal with matters of good or bad, right vs. wrong”. For example, as a Christian, I have a normative set of values that are likely held by other Christians. As I noted above, who’s good is good? Jensen argues that integrity is key to what he calls workability within an organization. “Without integrity the workability of any object, system, person, group or organization declines; and as workability declines, the opportunity for performance declines.” He states that integrity leads to trust. As a follower of Jesus, I am called to a high standard of morals and ethics. How I keep my word following these morals and ethics is where my integrity comes into play. We will all fail to keep our word at various levels. Sometimes, Jensen argues, we even fail to honor our word to ourselves. This could look like failing to go to the gym