While corporate communication scholars have emphasized that the articulation of a customer-oriented (CO) corporate vision is absolutely imperative for success, research has also documented that the external communication of corporate visions often does not accurately represent what is communicated within organizations and goes no further than an illusional marketing tool for organizations. However, research has painted an unclear picture of how a possible (mis)alignment between what is communicated externally and internally (i.e., visionary leadership) about a CO organizational vision relates to employees and organizations’ achievement of realizing that CO vision. In this paper, we draw on the theory of behavioral integrity, theorizing and finding that a misalignment between external and internal communication of a CO vision backfires on middle managers’ behavioral integrity attributions to top management teams of their organizations. This, in turn, negatively affects CO employee behavior and the organizations’ performance in achieving the vision. We test and find support for our predictions in a multisource multimethod – field and archival – study.
