Merit Principles Merit Further Investigation: The Influence on Employee Perception of Whistleblowing

ABSTRACT

Merit principles have been fundamental to managing human resources for several decades in public administration. However, the meaning of merit and its relationship with other values needs more attention from the scholarship. This study investigates how three components of merit principles, i.e., tenure protection, merit-based hiring, and merit-based rewards, affect government employees in different ways by focusing on their willingness to report wrongdoings. This study finds from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey that tenure protection is a significant positive predictor of whistleblowing, and its negative marginal effect turns to positive when employees perceive their tenures are well protected. However, their willingness to blow the whistle is less related to merit-based hiring, while merit-based rewards have a positive effect on whistleblowing despite the ambiguous expectation in the literature. Employee empowerment, trust in management, and ethical leadership consistently increase the probability of whistleblowing. This study finds no evidence of interagency differences.

KEYWORDS:

• Merit principles
• tenure protection
• merit-based hiring
• pay-for-performance
• U.S. federal agencies
• whistleblowing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The mission of the MSPB is to “protect the merit system principles and promote an effective federal workforce free of prohibited personnel practices.” For details, refer to https://www.mspb.gov/msp/meritsystemsprinciples.htm.

2. A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), or confidentiality agreement (CA), requires employees not to publish, divulge, or disclose any unauthorized information obtained in the course of their employment (USC Title 18, Section 1905). Currently, it applies to employees in agencies related to national security and foreign affairs, while it is discussed to expand it to all federal employees under the Trump Administration.

3. According to the OPM report, “Of the 848,237 employees who received the FEVS, 421,748 completed the survey for a government-wide response rate of 49.7%” (USOPM, 2015, p. 25).

4. The Department of Homeland Security was identified as having the lowest score across all three merit-based practices.