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Walking The Talk: A Multistakeholder Exploration Of Organizational Authenticity, Employee Productivity, And Post-Merger Performance, Margaret Cording, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Robert E. Hoskisson, Karsten Jonsen

Management Faculty Publications

Does consistency between how a firm treats employees (what it does) and its espoused employee-oriented values (what it says) affect employee productivity? Furthermore, given that the stakeholder theory perspective holds that what happens to one stakeholder influences other stakeholders, does this sort of consistency vis-à-vis a firm’s customers also influence employee productivity? We empirically investigate the influence of organizational authenticity—defined as consistency between a firm’s espoused values and realized practices—in the context of a merger, and specifically during post-merger integration. Our findings show that a lack of organizational authenticity in terms of both under-promising and over-promising to both employees and …