I believe this needs "DECLARE <name> INSENSITIVE CURSOR FOR";otherwise its not in a loop...

Insert Into @temp

  Select Distinct employeeid

  From directory

  Where higmanagerempid = @empid

My suggestion was: recalling a UDF with @empid (for each level) until none found. You can still share temp tables and results, so all iterations provide a complete tree search.

The UDF is passed @empid the first time and retrieves next level; it calls itself on each new @empid found until none found (thus recursive heirarchy) and until all managerial relations are found under first @empid.

The example of UDF iteration or recursion provided previously was a simple one showing UDF recursion being used to break-out a string.

Later this month I'll be building UDF recursive functions for about 3 or 4 different tables where UDF iteration will be used to retrieve data tree relations (based on same table hierarchy) & will post when complete.