Encouraging employees to report unethical conduct internally: It takes a village

    Authors

    D. M. Mayer; S. Nurmohamed; L. K. Trevino; D. L. Shapiro;M. Schminke

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process.

    Keywords

    Ethics; Whistle-blowing; Leadership; Coworkers; ETHICAL LEADERSHIP; PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY; MULTIPLE-REGRESSION; BUSINESS; ETHICS; BEHAVIOR; ORGANIZATIONS; MEDIATION; PERSPECTIVE; OUTCOMES; MODELS; Psychology, Applied; Management; Psychology, Social

    Abstract

    Via three studies of varying methodologies designed to complement and build upon each other, we examine how supervisory ethical leadership is associated with employees' reporting unethical conduct within the organization (i.e., internal whistle-blowing). We also examine whether the positive effect of supervisory ethical leadership is enhanced by another important social influence: coworkers' ethical behavior. As predicted, we found that employees' internal whistle-blowing depends on an ethical tone being set by complementary social influence sources at multiple organizational levels (both supervisory and coworker levels), leading us to conclude that "it takes a village" to support internal whistle-blowing. Also, this interactive effect was found to be mediated by a fear of retaliation in two studies but not by perceptions of futility. We conclude by identifying theoretical and practical implications of our research. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

    Volume

    121

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2013

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    89

    Last Page

    103

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000317454600008

    ISSN

    0749-5978

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