Predicting employee reactions to perceived organizational wrongdoing: Demoralization, justice, proactive personality, and whistle-blowing

Abstract

News reports of organizational wrongdoing often pique interest in the question of how to encourage employees to report it. We used data from a survey of more than 3000 organizational members in the US to test a model of whistle-blowing. As predicted, observation of wrongdoing generally was associated with lower perceived organizational support and lower perceived justice of reporting channels (both procedural justice and distributive justice), suggesting that tolerating wrongdoing has negative effects for the organization itself, but there was also evidence that correcting wrongdoing may be nearly as positive as preventing it. Three previously untested variables – proactive personality, less co-worker invalidation, and leverage in the specific situation – predicted whistle-blowing, as did strength of evidence, a variable for which prior findings were inconsistent. Gender also was related to whistle-blowing. Finally, the predictors of blowing the whistle exclusively to one’s supervisor were similar to those of using other channels. Implications for theory, research, and practice are described.