INTEGRITY AND EMPLOYEE JOB PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Malaysia is currently ranking 62 in Transparency International (TI) index which is the worst position that the country ever placed. This is due to major corruption scandal by the higher level management in Government of Malaysia. The integrity issue can jeopardize the nation performance and impression towards Malaysia. Therefore, it is important to understand the state of integrity among employees in order to prevent any unwanted problem to the organization and alas to the nation. Integrity is an individual trait that can build trusting relationship with others. At corporate level, it takes individual integrity to develop a consensus around shared values. Hence, it is crucial to have a trustworthy and high integrity level to keep organization in the right path to success. Is there any relationship between work and employee performance and how religiosity can moderate the relationship between integrity and employee performance? Therefore, the study were the effect of integrity and employees' job performance in four main industries in Malaysia which are manufacturing, accommodation, food and beverages, education and public administration. The data were collected from 420 employees using questionnaire approach. The data collected will be analyzed using Smart PLS 3.0. The result revealed that there is positive significant relationship between integrity and employees' job performance with Malaysia working culture as the background. The finding show that integrity plays a vital role in employee performance as well a high integrity employee will lead to a better performance.

Full text

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS
ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 16, 2020
517
INTEGRITY AND EMPLOYEE JOB PERFORMANCE
Nurul Aisyah Awanis binti A Rahim1, Khatijah binti Omar2,
Siti Nor Adawiyah Azzahra binti Kamaruddin3
1,2,3Faculty of Business, Economy, and Social Development, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala
Terengganu, Malaysia, aisyah_arahim@yahoo.com
Received: 15 March 2020 Revised and Accepted: 19 June 2020
ABSTRACT: Malaysia is currently ranking 62 in Transparency International (TI) index which is the worst
position that the country ever placed. This is due to major corruption scandal by the higher level management in
Government of Malaysia. The integrity issue can jeopardize the nation performance and impression towards
Malaysia. Therefore, it is important to understand the state of integrity among employees in order to prevent any
unwanted problem to the organization and alas to the nation. Integrity is an individual trait that can build
trusting relationship with others. At corporate level, it takes individual integrity to develop a consensus around
shared values. Hence, it is crucial to have a trustworthy and high integrity level to keep organization in the right
path to success. Is there any relationship between work and employee performance and how religiosity can
moderate the relationship between integrity and employee performance? Therefore, the study were the effect of
integrity and employees’ job performance in four main industries in Malaysia which are manufacturing,
accommodation, food and beverages, education and public administration. The data were collected from 420
employees using questionnaire approach. The data collected will be analyzed using Smart PLS 3.0. The result
revealed that there is positive significant relationship between integrity and employees’ job performance with
Malaysia working culture as the background. The finding show that integrity plays a vital role in employee
performance as well a high integrity employee will lead to a better performance.
KEYWORDS: Integrity, Religiosity, Job Performance, Malaysia.
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the early 1990s, public and private organizations have devoted more attention to integrity management
(1); Becker, 1998; (3); Treviño & Nelson, 2004; Huberts, Maesschalck, & Jurkiewicz, 2008; (4). A culture of
integrity creates a highly valued work environment; it impacts the quality of corporate governance and it
provides a foundation for solid long-term financial performance.
Retaining performing worker is very crucial to a company. This is because good employees’ performance will
lead to good organization’s performance. Without a well-trained and well prepared labor force, company may
lose the ability to compete both nationally and internationally, eventually will economic success (5). Waleed
Ahmed, (2011) stress in the study that most organizations aim to achieve high level of job performance, where
the organization's performance depends on the human element effectiveness which requires its development,
maintaining, achieving the integration and balance.
Study by Mahdavikhou, Hossein, Moez, Khotanlou, & Karami, (2014) based on Iranian culture, stated that
moral intelligence among employees such as integrity and responsibility can give a chain effect to ethical
thinking and decision making and sequentially contributes to a better job performance. Besides, John C. Bogle,
a retired CEO of Vanguard Funds, made the case a integrity has market value, enabling businesses to attract
capital and to increase market share (8)
Therefore, employees who have high moral intelligence supposedly will always be alert with his or her
performance. It is because they align with the objectives of the company and they believe that company
achievement is part of their obligation to achieve. Is it Malaysian’s Integrity factors lead to increase or decrease
of performance? On this basis, the objective of this study is to investigate and verify the hypothesis on the
relationship between integrity and employees' job performance.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Integrity and Employee Performance
There are many external factors that may influence employees' job performance such as working culture,
incentives, leadership style and corporate culture. Despite all external problems, employees are facing with

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS
ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 16, 2020
518
some internal and personal problem including integrity. This attitude is very important to prevent corruptions
and lost capable workers and the trustworthiness of the worker to keep organization secrecy. Problem in
integrity are always being an issue in private and non-private companies, problems about time spending on
lunch hour break, tea break and skip from working hour for doing personal errands always happen in
employees’ daily working day.
Malaysia is an Islamic country; hence, Islamic practice should be applied in this Islamic country. The Lord
Words in Holy Qur'an in An-Nisa (4:58) also focus on integrity which has said honesty from the Islamic
perspective for human beings to do their duties followed by obligations. It means that every right and duties that
been put under someone care and responsibility has to be fulfilled with trust. Integrity is a very important aspect
in Muslim life as Allah commands to put all right to the righteous. It reflects that, not focusing any rewards or
opportunities, the staff who have been placed in confidence to complete any task or offer opportunity to
maintain some confidentiality will be obliged to keep the secret until the end and need to fulfilled all task and
job as best as they can.
Integrity has been defined as a philosophy of consistency of actions, values, methods, organizational principle,
expectations, and results. Integrity is not something we are born with. It is something we learn and strengthen
over time (9). Employees with high integrity are said to be more rational, honest, and independent and just
compare to those with less integrity (Becker, 1998). A true heart and truthful soul interact with people who want
to work with, invest in, purchase from or partner with companies they know would be available to them and
treat them equally. A lack of honesty and confidence can cause long term harm to the company when workers
have a choice. Employees can leave the company or choose to be underperformance.
A study by Way, Simons, Leroy, and Tuleja (2018) on 90 middle managers from 18 hotel properties located in
China, it proved that managers who maintained their word-action alignment by demonstrating middle manager
behavioral integrity positively will affect middle manager task performance rating. This showed that a good
example can bring other parties in the organizations to behave with the right behavioral integrity too. Besides
the integrity of the manager, the trustworthiness level of the leader as seen by the employee may also affect
employee performance (12).
Gender, Race and Employee Performance
Gender-based differences in the organization are fortified and justified by generalizations and preferences and
that describe the positive attributes to the males (13). Up 2019, there were still unions that tried to protect
women rights because there were still differences in men and women equalities. There are no objections that
some of the work performed by men cannot be done by women and same goes to some of the work performed
by women cannot be fulfilled by men. Even with hard work and a high level of talent, career women are
reported hardly to attain a high position. This is because men are sponsored more as compared to women by
their mentors in promotions (14). Women are always seen as weak creatures, hence the credibility of women are
always being doubted. Women managers can hardly earn respect from men subordinates.
Malaysia is known as a multiracial country that has various backgrounds of races but still can live in harmony
and respect other races. Study by Hasan and Teng (2017) showed that race has no impact toward work-life
balance and job satisfaction. This means that all Malaysians have the same work-life balance and satisfaction
despite their various races and background.
A study by Noraini, Yusuf, Azzah, and Kamil (2016) proved that culture, ethnicity and employee performance
exhibited positive relationships with employee innovativeness. This portrays that employee races and ethnicities
can play an important part in employee performance. Therefore, the researcher wants to see the moderation
effect of gender and race between integrity and employee performance relationship.
III. RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
After reviewing the literature, it was found that integrity is formed with positive behavioural such as principles,
values, beliefs, truth, right and promise (17). Hence, the research objective is to study the impact of behavioural
towards employees’ job performance in Malaysian culture. The review of the literature also led to propose a
conceptual framework that illustrates the relationship between integrity and employees' job performance. The
race and gender are treated as moderator since there are inconsistences in the results for both of variables
towards employee job performance.
Therefore, the following hypotheses proposed:
Hypothesis 1: Integrity has positive relationship with employee performance.
Hypothesis 2: Gender has moderation effects on the relationship between integrity and employees performance.

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS
ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 16, 2020
519
Hypothesis 3: Race has moderation effects on the relationship between integrity and employees performance.
Figure 1. Research Frameworks
IV. METHODOLOGY
Sample Size and Sampling Technique
For data collection purpose, proportionate stratified random sampling method were applied since it acts as
estimation of population parameters.
The survey was distributed to particular employee in four industries in Malaysia which are manufacturing,
hospitality, education, and public administration industry. The researcher entrance to chosen companies was
under permission. There are 110 employees was selected to answer the questions within thirty minutes and the
survey questions set were collected after the process of answering each of the survey was done. Response were
made on a 7-point Likers scale and ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The questionnaires
included three latent variables; employee performance measured using questionnaire by Suliman, (2001),
integrity measured using questionnaire by Martin & Austin, (2010) and religiosity measured using measurement
by Hassan, (2014). Integrity comprised four indicators which are acting consistently with principles, values and
belief, telling the truth, standing up for what are right and keeping promises.
Reliability and Validity
This study adopted establish questionnaire from previous study, nevertheless, the result of the survey might be
very different in terms of culture and background of the respondents. As stated by Hair Jr. et al., (2013) the
common agreed upon lower Cronbach’s alpha is 0.70, The reliability test result show that the Cronbach’s alpha
for employees' job performance is 0.96 and 0.93 for integrity items. The Hetrotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) results
for this study is below 0.85 (21) which suggesting a good convergent validity. This showed that there are no
significant correlations among indicators of the four latent variables; employee performance, integrity, gender
and race.
Convergent validity reflects the extent to which a measure correlates positively with other indicators of the same
construct. In order to calculate convergent validity, Average Variance Extracted (AVE) were used. AVE
represents the communality of a construct as well (20). The construct explains the variance with their indicators
when the result of AVE is equal or more that 0.5 (20). Hence, the researcher also considers the factor (outer
loading) that is greater than 0.5 is an acceptable item. This shows that there are low in redundancy and
acceptable. The R² result for this model also is 0.492 which showed 49.2 % of the factors that will affect
employee performance is integrity.
Table 1: Reliability and Validity Statistical of the Model
Cronbach's Alpha
Composite Reliability
Average Variance Extracted (AVE)
Employee Performance
0.954
0.958
0.547
Integrity
0.936
0.948
0.723
V. RESULT
The Partial Least Square (PLS) path modeling method was used to discover the causal relationships between the
four latent variables and the results are displayed in Table 2. In the column of path coefficient, the numbers
represent the magnitudes of the causal relationships between the latent variables. The significant and positive
coefficients support the proposed Hypotheses 1, where race and gender do not moderate the relationship
between integrity and employee performance.

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS
ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 16, 2020
520
Table 2. Results of Hypothesis Testing
Path Coefficient
T values
P Values
Hypothesis
Result
H1.Integrity-> Employee Performance
0.707
10.188
0.000
Supported
H2 Integrity -> Gender ->Employee
Performance
-0.048
0.552
0.291
Not Supported
H2 Integrity -> Race -> Employee
Performance
-0.014
0.112
0.455
Not Supported
Note. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
VI. CONCLUSION
The study assumes to give effect to the academic and business practices. To the best of researcher’s study, there
still lack of published article in integrity, religiosity and employees' job performance in the same framework,
hence, this study is to arouse the awareness and enforcement of the parties involved on the issues that related to
integrity and religiosity which in turn will affect employee job performance.
The results showed that there is a positive relationship between integrity and employee performance. Therefore,
Hypothesis 1 (Integrity has a positive relationship with employee job performance) in this study is supported.
The results of this study portrays that employees with high integrity will perform better compared to employees
who lack integrity.
In every aspect of life, integrity is very important. All religions empower their adherents to practice integrity in
every step they take. For example, Islam has its own concept of integrity and because of the importance of it,
Muslims have been ordered to act upon this issue as stated in the Holy Quranic verses. As stated before, this
study focus in integrity as a philosophy of consistency of actions, values, methods, organizational principles,
expectations, and results (9), and using Clarken (2009) as to explain integrity which is divided into four
dimensions, namely i) acting consistently with principles, values, and beliefs, ii) telling the truth, iii) standing up
for what is right, and iv) keeping promises (7).Therefore, it is clearly state that integrity is a very important trait
because it can bring the company market value, enable the business to attract capital and can be attributes to
increase market share (8).
For a human being with the responsibility as an educator, integrity is a very crucial trait. Referring to Mohamad,
Saadiah, Saad, Hayaati, and Ismail (2014), the study conducted on teachers in Sabah, Malaysia shows that
teachers that have high integrity lead to higher performance too. This is similar to Palanski and Yammarino
(2009) who also reported that high integrity lead to higher performance. For this particular study, it is
highlighted that a group of employees with high integrity leads to a high performance result and then deliver
desirable outcomes to other stakeholders of the company.
Therefore, it is confirmed that integrity is a crucial trait for employees to increase their performance level.
Integrity can lead to ethical thinking and better decision making which in turn contributes to a better job
performance (7) and if integrity is not part of a workforce attribute, the whole organization will face severe
internal problems such as corruption that will eventually drag the organization down.
VII. REFERENCES
[1] Murphy KR, Lee SL. Personality Variables Related to Integrity Test Scores : The Role of
Conscientiousness. J Bus Psychol. 1994;8(4):413–25.
[2] Becker TE. NOTE IN ORGANIZATIONS : INTEGRITY BEYOND HONESTY AND
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. Acad Manag J. 1998;23(1):154–61.
[3] Ones DS, Viswesvaran C. Integrity Tests and Other Criterion- Focused Occupational Personality Scales (
COPS ) Used in Personnel Selection. Int J Sel Assess. 2001;9(June):31–40.
[4] Hoekstra A, Talsma J, Kaptien M. Integrity Management as Interorganizational Activity : Exploring
Integrity Partnerships That Keep the Wheel in Motion. Public Integr. 2016;18:167–84.
[5] Ferguson KL, Reio TG. Human resource management systems and firm performance. J Manag Dev. 2009
May;29(5):471–94.
[6] Abdel-Razek WA. Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of the Job Performance of the Specialists Working
in the Youth Care at Helwan University. World J Sport Sci. 2011;4(2):116–25.
[7] Mahdavikhou M, Hossein A, Moez A, Khotanlou M, Karami G. The Impact of Moral Intelligence on
Accountants ’ Job Performance. Int Res J Financ Econ. 2014;(123):126–46.

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS
ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 16, 2020
521
[8] Koehn D. Integrity as a Business Asset. Joumal Bus Ethics. 2005;58:125–36.
[9] Odrakiewicz PP, Odrakiewicz D. Integrity Management and Anti-Corruption Actions in an Organizational
Context Poznan University College of Business. Glob Manag J. 2014;1(2).
[10] Becker TE. INTEGRITY IN ORGANIZATIONS : BEYOND HONESTY AND CONSCIENTIOUSNESS.
Acad Manag Rev. 1998;23(1):154–61.
[11] Way SA, Simons T, Leroy H, Tuleja EA. What is in it for Me? Middle Manager Behavioral Integrity and
Performance. J Bus Ethics. 2018;150(3):765–77.
[12] Holley EC, Wu K, Avey JB. The Impact of Leader Trustworthiness on Employee Voice and Performance
in China. J Leadersh Organ Stud. 2018;1–11.
[13] Rizwan M, Khan MN, Nadeem B, Abbas Q. The Impact of Workforce Diversity Towards Employee
Performance : Evidence from Banking Sector of Pakistan. Am J Mark Res. 2016;2(2):53–60.
[14] Bukhari SS, Sharma BC. Workplace Gender Diversity & Inclusive Growth in Public & Private
Organizations. Indian J Ind Relat. 2014;49(3):551–64.
[15] Hasan NABB, Teng LS. Work-Life Balance and Job Satisfaction among Working Adults in Malaysia:
The Role of Gender and Race as Moderators. J Econ Bus Manag. 2017;5(1):18–24.
[16] Noraini B, Yusuf M, Azzah F, Kamil S. Relationships Between Cultural Values , Ethnicity , Performance
and Innovativeness : a Case Study of Malaysia Northern Region Private Sector Employees. Int J Soc Sci.
2016;47(1):70–89.
[17] Martin DE, Austin B. Validation of the moral competency inventory measurement instrument. Manag Res
Rev. 2010 Apr;33(5):437–51.
[18] Suliman AM. Work performance: is it one thing or many things? The multidimensionality of performance
in a Middle Eastern context. Int J Hum Resour Manag. 2001 Sep;12(6):1049–61.
[19] Hassan SH. The Role of Islamic Values on Green Purchase Intention. J Islam Mark. 2014;5(3):1–26.
[20] Hair JF, Black WC, Babin BJ, Anderson RE. Multivariate Data Analysis. 7th ed. Pearson; 2010. 816 p.
[21] Kline RB. Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling (3rd Edition). The Guilford Press;
2011.
[22] Mohamad B, Saadiah H, Saad MAT, Hayaati S, Ismail S. THE ROLE OF INTEGRITY AS A
MEDIATOR BETWEEN WORK SATISFACTION AND WORK PERFORMANCE IN THE
PERSPECTIVE OF ISLAM : AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH USING SEM / AMOS MODEL. Int J Res
Applied, Nat Soc Sci. 2014;2(1):71–84.
[23] Palanski ME, Yammarino FJ. Integrity and leadership: A multi-level conceptual framework. Leadersh Q.
2009;20(3):405–20.