Making Sense of Whistle-Blowing's Antecedents: Learning from Research on Identity and Ethics Programs

Despite a significant increase in whistle-blowing practices in work organizations, we know little about what differentiates whistle-blowers from those who observe a wrongdoing but chose not to report it. In this review article, we first highlight the arenas in which research on whistle-blowing has produced inconsistent results and those in which the findings have been consistent. Second, we propose that the adoption of an identity approach will help clarify the inconsistent findings and extend prior work on individual-level motives behind whistle-blowing. Third, we argue that the integration of the whistle-blowing research with that on ethics programs will aid in systematically expanding our understanding of the situational antecedents of whistle-blowing. We conclude our review by discussing new theoretical and methodological arenas of research in the domain of whistle-blowing. U .S. ORGANIZATIONS LOSE FIVE PERCENT of their annual revenues, equivalent to $652 billion, to fraud (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 2006). This huge loss suggests that organizations and their various stakeholders need to monitor better those engaging in white-collar crime and other unethical practices in organizations. Miceli and Near (2005) argued that the most effective stakeholders for reducing the occurrence of unethical behaviors in organizations were the employees of the organizations. For instance, in a study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (2006), 'tips,' mainly from employees, were found to be the most common means by which fraud was detected. However, another survey on workplace ethics (Hudson Employment Index, 2005) showed that of the almost one third (31 percent) of U.S. employees witnessing co-workers engaging in ethical misconduct, only half (52 percent) reported it to an authority. Non-reporting of unethical practices by those observing them may influence the occurrence of crimes in the modem organization. In fact, from 1996 to 2005, the federal government, through the help of whistle-blowers, recovered $9.3 billion in fraudulent Medicare claims, according to data from the Department of Justice (Hernandez, 2008). Given these striking reporting rates and figures, it is clear that we need to understand better the individual and situational antecedents of whistleblowing so that organizational members can be encouraged to adopt this effective mode of "societal control mechanism over organizational misdeeds" (Miceli & Near, 2005: 98). Whistle-blowing is defined as "the disclosure by organization members (former or current) of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices under the control of their employers, to persons or organizations that may be able to effect action" (Near & ©2009 Business Ethics Quarterly 19:4 (October 2009); ISSN 1052-150X pp. 553-586 554 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY Miceli, 1985:4). Our review of the whistle-blowing literature indicates that research in this field can be largely divided into studies examining the predictors of the observation of wrongdoing (e.g., Miceli & Near, 1992), the antecedents of the actual act of whistle-blowing (e.g.. Brewer & Seiden, 1998; Dworkin & Baucus, 1998; Miceli & Near, 1988), the process of whistle-blowing (e.g.. Dozier & Miceli, 1985; Near & Miceli, 1985), and the factors that predict retaliation against whistle-blowers (e.g., Miceli & Near, 2002; Rothschild & Miethe, 1999). Figure 1 offers an illustration of the extant research of whistle-blowing broadly deñned. Figure 1: Extant Literature of Whistle-Blowing Observation of wrongdoing Situational characteristics that facilitate whistleblowing Motivational antecedents to whistleblowing Actual act of whistleblowing Focus of our review Reactions to whistleblowing including retaliation In this article, we focus on the individual and situational antecedents of the decision to blow the whistle, in order to uncover both the consistent and inconsistent findings in whistle-blowing research, and to identify new and fruitful future areas of research. Toward this goal, we searched the mainstream organizational and ethics journals for empirical articles on whistle-blowing.' We also included book chapters and unpublished dissertations to gamer a more complete and updated understanding of the factors that inñuence an individual's decision to blow the whistle. Given the size of the extant literature on this topic, we have limited our review mainly to those studies which explicitly focus on whistle-blowing. Table 1 (see Appendix, p. 572) provides a summary of all the key studies on the antecedents of whistle-blowing highlighting their key concepts, variables, predictions and findings, and method and sample used. This article is organized as follows. We first review work on the individual antecedents of whistle-blowing, with the aim of highUghting the consistent and inconsistent findings in the literature. Building on this body of research, we consider how adopting an identity-based approach to whistle-blowing is compatible with what we know about the consistent findings in the literature, and may further help explain its inconsistent findings, as well as provide new possible avenues for research. Next, we review research on the situational antecedents of whistle-blowing. Compared to the individual antecedents of whistle-blowing, we find more consistency in this sub-literature. We discuss these results and propose that by integrating research on LEARNING FROM RESEARCH ON IDENTITY AND ETHICS PROGRAMS 555 whistle-blowing with that on ethics programs in organizations, we may be able to comprehend better the contextual factors affecting whistle-blowing. Table 2 summarizes the various individual and situational antecedents of whistle-blowing. We conclude our review with a discussion of the methodological issues associated with the extant work on whistle-blowing and suggestions for fruitful avenues of future research. Table 2: Individual Antecedents of Whistle-Blowing