Top-level Management at a Company Sets the Standards

Here is an interesting study that shows that things like honesty and integrity are set at the top levels of management in a company and only go down from there:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/06/the_datas_in_honesty_really_do.html

...managers should take several important messages away from this research.

Knowing that managers tend to assume greater levels of integrity in their direct reports than the workers do themselves, they should not take honesty as a given. Nor should they assume that effectiveness and honesty go hand-in-glove. They should instead take deliberate care to communicate expectations of honesty. They should put stronger structures in place to require and enforce the level of integrity they want to protect and assume is in place. They should take a good look at their own integrity and honesty standards and consider how well those standards are communicated and made evident to their teams.