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Whistle-blowing in Organizations: the Decision-Making Process and Multi-level Theoretical Framework
2014, 37(2):
460-467.
In recent years, moral anomie in organizations has occurred frequently, making the issue of moral ethics a common concern for both managers and scholars. This issue includes not only the ethical or unethical behaviors in organizations, but also the design and implementation of management mechanism of ethics. Whistle－blowing is the report and disclosure of illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices by organization members to persons or parties that may be able to effect action. It is arguably playing a key role for timely correcting unethical behaviors in organizations and an effective mechanism for organizational ethics management. During China’s economic transition, unethical behaviors in organizations often happen, but the positive role played by whistle-blowing has not been given sufficient attention in management practices, and the related research on whistle-blowing is insufficient in academic field.
This paper offers a review of Western scholars’ research on whistle-blowing over the past half a century. Firstly, we discuss the origin and concept of whistle-blowing, indicating that whistle-blowing is a type of organizational citizenship behavior that is characterized by being voluntary, prohibited, challenging and risky. Secondly, we compare the decision-making process models of whistle-blowing from different theoretical perspectives, and then integrate a model of four-stage whistle-blowing including observation of unethical behaviors, analysis and judgment, whistle-blowing intention and whistle-blowing.
Thirdly, the results of empirical research on the antecedents of whistle-blowing are summarized, finding that power-related variables such as demographics, positions, role responsibilities, and organizationally-perceived variables such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, have each reached different conclusions, while inherent individual characteristics such as positive personality and emotions, as well as positive organizational context characteristics such as ethical leadership and peer support, ethical culture and climate all have positive effects on whistle-blowing. The influences of national laws and rules as well as organizational ethic plans on whistle-blowing needs further research.
Fourthly, the double results of whistle-blowing are explained: positively speaking, effective whistle-blowing is beneficial not only to society as a whole in that it prevents the public from health and financial damage, but also to organizations because it strengthens the ethical culture of the organization and enhances the performance of the organization's human resource management. Negatively speaking, however, external whistle-blowing may damage an organization’s reputation and make it lose customers and suffer from falling stock prices and financial loss; internal whistle-blowing may challenge the hierarchy and the leadership authority, may result in atmospheres of suspicion, hostility and defense in groups, undermining the group identification, loyalty and morale of members, and thus hurt the organizational performance. As for individuals, retaliation to whistleblower is a rather common result, such as the termination of his career, the negative influence on his promotion and interpersonal relationships, and so on.
Fifthly, we propose the possible future research directions: 1. to explore the influences of individual intrinsic characteristics variables on whistle-blowing from the perspectives of positive psychology and neuroscience; 2. to strengthen the research on whistle-blowing in such special industries as food, health care, finance, government service; 3. to investigate the effects of organizational ethics management system, human resource management practices on whistle-blowing; 4. to explore the "black box" of whistle-blowing formation mechanism, probing into the mediating mechanisms in whistle-blowing formation, as well as the interaction mechanisms to whistle-blowing, such as the role of moral identity, professional identity and organizational identity in mediating the relationship between organizational context and whistle-blowing of individuals - context interactions impacting to whistle-blowing. Finally, we analyze the contextual characteristics in China which might affect whistle-blowing, and propose to carry out the localized research on whistle-blowing.
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