Where to report wrongdoings? Exploring the determinants of internal versus external whistleblowing

Abstract

Whistleblowers play an important role in revealing unethical behaviors in government and making government more transparent and accountable to the public. Thus, the question of how to encourage government employees’ whistleblowing behaviors has been of great interest to both scholars and practitioners. What has received relatively little attention, however, is what factors influence public employees to become internal versus external whistleblowers. From an organization’s perspective, external whistleblowing is generally viewed as less desirable than internal whistleblowing. Thus, it is important for an organization to promote internal whistleblowing. This study contributes to expanding our knowledge on whistleblowing by examining what factors influence whistleblower employees to report wrongdoings internally rather than externally. The findings suggest that both individual and situational factors are significant predictors of public employees’ selection of whistleblowing channels. The paper concludes by discussing limitations of the present study and suggesting directions for future research.

Keywords:

• Whistleblowing
• internal versus external whistleblowing
• individual and situational predictors

Notes

1. The study variables used in this research are also frequently examined in whistleblowing research investigating employees’ whistleblowing decisions – that is, whether or not to blow the whistle. One of the reviewers raised a very interesting question: Do factors that influence employees’ whistleblowing decisions have similar effects on their choice of reporting channels? In an attempt to answer this question, the present study conducted additional analyses and compared the effects of the study variables on employees’ whistleblowing decisions with the effects of the same variables on whistleblower employees’ selections of whistleblowing channels. Although the additional results tables are not included in this paper due to space limitations, the results suggest that individual and situational factors influence not only employees’ decisions of whether or not to blow the whistle, but also their decisions of where to blow the whistle. In addition, and arguably more importantly, the results also suggest that the same variable may have varying impact depending on the nature of the situations being tested (e.g. not reporting vs. reporting, not reporting vs. reporting internally, not reporting vs. reporting externally, and reporting internally vs. externally). More systematic research should be done in the future in order to better understand the impact of various factors in different decision situations related to whistleblowing.