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45 Indus. & Lab. Rel. Rev. 113 (1991-1992)
Who Blows the Whistle and Why

handle is hein.journals/ialrr45 and id is 115 raw text is: WHO BLOWS THE WHISTLE AND WHY? MARCIA P. MICELI, JANET P. NEAR, and CHARLES R. SCHWENK* This study examines the effects of a number of perceptual variables on internal auditors' reporting of wrongdoing by employees and managers in their organizations. Survey responses of 653 Directors of Internal Auditing who observed what they perceived to be incidents of wrongdoing show that they were less likely to report these incidents when they did not feel compelled morally or by role prescription to do so, when they evaluated their job performance as below average, or when they were employed by highly bureaucratic organizations. Also, the auditors were more likely to report incidents to external agencies (as opposed to authorities within the organization) when they felt that the public or their co-workers were harmed by the wrongdoing, the wrongdoing involved theft by relatively low-level workers, there were few other observers, or the organization was highly regulated. I T is a rare day that the local newspaper does not contain at least one account of whistle-blowing-the disclosure by organi- zational members of illegal, immoral, or il- legitimate organizational acts or omissions to parties who can take action to correct the wrongdoing. Although whistle-blowing * Marcia Miceli is Associate Professor, Department of Management and Human Resources, Ohio State University, and Janet Near and Charles Schwenk are Professors of Management, both at Indiana Univer- sity, Bloomington. The authors thank the Research Foundation of the Institute of Internal Auditors for providing funding for this research, and in particu- lar Robert Muirhead, CIA, and Terry Sanderson, CIA, of the Institute for their assistance in coordinat- ing the project. Additional support was provided by Ohio State University and Indiana University. The authors also appreciate the research assistance of Linda Ferguson, Hussein EI-Kazaz, and Sherry Sullivan. The data for this study are being used in further research, and are not now available to other researchers. Also, the future availability of the data may be limited to preserve confidentiality. For further details and advice, contact Marcia Miceli, Department of Management and Human Resources, Ohio State University, 356 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Road, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1399. may present a threat to organizational au- thority structures (Weinstein 1979), it of- ten can improve long-term organizational effectiveness, because whistle-blowers may suggest solutions to organizational prob- lems (Brief and Motowidlo 1986). More im- portant, organization members, stockhold- ers, and society in general can benefit from the cessation of organizational wrongdoing such as fraud, unfair discrimination, or safety violations. Previous published research on whistle- blowing has been anecdotal or has relied heavily on secondary analysis of data generated by questionnaires administered to federal government employees by the United States Merit System Protection Board. Thus, the effects of many theoret- ically interesting variables have not been investigated, and the extent of generaliz- ability of prior findings to private sector organizations and their members is not known. The present study examines the factors associated with whistle-blowing by internal auditors. The principal research question is whether whistle-blowing can be pre- Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 45, No. I (October 1991). © by Cornell University. 0019-7939/91/4501 $01.00

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