From Inaction to External Whistleblowing: The Influence of the Ethical Culture of Organizations on Employee Responses to Observed Wrongdoing

Muel Kaptein

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Putting measures in place to prevent wrongdoing in organizations is important, but detecting and correcting wrongdoing is just as vital. Employees who observe wrongdoing should therefore be encouraged to respond in a manner that supports corrective action. This paper examines the influence of the ethical culture of organizations on employee responses to observed wrongdoing. The findings show that, contrary to transparency and congruency of management, many other dimensions of ethical culture were negatively related to inaction and external whistleblowing and positively related to direct interven-tion, reporting to management and calling an ethics hotline. The model used for ethical culture explained 27.5% of intended responses by employees.

Keywords: ethical culture; ethics hotline; reporting; whistleblowing; wrongdoing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 G3 M M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08-19
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