Research 2026-02-18 Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager Neuchâtel

Keeping commitments to your manager: what research helps clarify

In a relationship with a manager, promising more can seem like a way to provide reassurance. Yet the useful question is more precise: how can commitments remain credible when delivery also depends on technical uncertainties?

What the literature establishes

Tony Simons (2002, Organization Science) defines behavioral integrity as the perceived alignment between words and deeds, particularly in promise keeping. His article proposes a theoretical framework focused on managers, rather than an experimental demonstration of its effects. It thereby distinguishes perceived consistency from an overall judgement of a person's morality.

Trust does not rest on a single quality

Roger Mayer, James Davis and F. David Schoorman (1995, Academy of Management Review) distinguish three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness: ability, benevolence and integrity. In their theoretical model, trusting means accepting vulnerability; it is not simply observing good performance. Applied cautiously to the relationship with a manager, this distinction suggests that recognised technical competence is not enough to make every promise credible.

Keeping commitments to your manager: what research helps clarify — SHR, Neuchâtel — Neuchâtel

The premature conclusion

One might infer that a reliable employee must always meet the date originally announced. These articles do not support that conclusion: they do not test a rule under which meeting a deadline should take precedence over quality or safety. Making a condition for success explicit and reporting when it no longer holds is a possible practice consistent with these frameworks, not an intervention whose effectiveness they have demonstrated. (our executive and employee training programmes)

What these articles cannot resolve

Both articles are theoretical contributions and do not measure the effect of a commitment-tracking protocol in a Neuchâtel business. Simons's framework primarily concerns perceptions of managers: applying it to employees' commitments remains an extension. Tracking that overlooks technical dependencies therefore risks attributing to an individual what actually stems from the organisation of work.

A practical check in Neuchâtel

In a watchmaking workshop, a microtechnology company or a precision microelectronics team in Neuchâtel, the SHR programme « Construire une relation efficace avec son manager » can use a four-week trial. For each commitment agreed with the manager, record the deliverable, acceptance criterion, original deadline and known dependencies, then date any agreed changes. At the end of the trial, calculate the proportion of commitments due during the period that were accepted against the agreed criterion before the original deadline, and separately identify those renegotiated before that date and those overdue without a new agreement. This record makes discrepancies open to evidence-based discussion; it is neither a trust score nor proof of the training's effectiveness. To go further: explore the Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager training in Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

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