Title

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

Authors

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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