Integrity is the quality of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant formally described the principle of universality of application for one's motives in his categorical imperative.
He thought they were fools and that he was one of the few who had the courage and integrity to live a consistent life in light of the truth that value judgments, including the command "Thou shalt not kill," are merely subjective assertions.Politicians are given power to make, execute, or control policy, which can have important consequences.
Integrity is also acting consistently not only with what is generally accepted as moral, what others think, but primarily with what is ethical, what politicians should do based on reasonable arguments.
Aristotle identified dignity (megalopsychia, variously translated as proper pride, greatness of soul, and magnanimity)[9] as the crown of the virtues, distinguishing it from vanity, temperance, and humility.
This is established for example via consistent messaging and a set of graphics standards to maintain visual integrity in marketing communications.
Kaptein and Wempe developed a theory of corporate integrity that includes criteria for businesses dealing with moral dilemmas.
The authors model integrity as the state of being whole and complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, and in perfect condition.
They posit a model of integrity that provides access to increased performance for individuals, groups, organizations, and societies.
Integrity relates, for example, to compliance to the rules as well as to social expectations, to morality as well as to ethics, and to actions as well as to attitude.
[8] Electronic signals are said to have integrity when there is no corruption of information between one domain and another, such as from a disk drive to a computer display.