A look at cross-cultural integrity testing in three banks

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of pre-employment integrity testing in culturally distinct samples. Design/methodology/approach: Integrity test scores from a total of 1,632 job applicants from three large banking corporations in Colombia, Israel, and Ukraine were studied and matched against a standard criterion of self-reported counterproductive work behaviors. Findings: Mean test scores differed significantly across the countries, as hypothesized, while no evidence of adverse impact was found for age or gender in any of the samples. In addition, consistently significant validities were maintained in each country, resulting in the potential utility for mitigating counterproductive work behaviors among employees. Research limitations/implications: The results of this study are believed to make theoretical and practical contributions to our current understanding of integrity testing in personnel selection in cross-cultural settings. As such, the findings may be of particular importance to the numerous organizations and practitioners around the world administering integrity tests today. These results notwithstanding, future cross-cultural studies of this kind should include external performance measures in order to investigate possible method biases related to the use of self-reported criteria. Originality/value: Despite extensive research on integrity testing in recent decades, this is one of the few studies to look at cross-cultural integrity testing, and one of the first to examine integrity testing in the specific countries studied here.