Title
Encouraging Employees To Report Unethical Conduct Internally: It Takes A Village
Keywords
Coworkers; Ethics; Leadership; Whistle-blowing
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. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.
Publication Date
5-1-2013
Publication Title
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Volume
121
Issue
1
Number of Pages
89-103
Document Type
Article
Personal Identifier
scopus
DOI Link
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.01.002
Copyright Status
Unknown
Socpus ID
84875253918 (Scopus)
Source API URL
https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84875253918
STARS Citation
Mayer, David M.; Nurmohamed, Samir; Treviño, Linda Klebe; Shapiro, Debra L.; and Schminke, Marshall, "Encouraging Employees To Report Unethical Conduct Internally: It Takes A Village" (2013). Scopus Export 2010-2014. 6918.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/scopus2010/6918