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Given the prevalence and concealment of misconduct in the workplace, whistleblowing has become an important organizational control mechanism. In this study, we focused on the process by which ethical leadership influences employees to blow the whistle internally. We collected data via a survey administered to the respondents, who were leader-member dyads in a large branch of the central bank in southern China. Hierarchical linear modeling results revealed that ethical leadership was positively related to internal whistleblowing by subordinates. We controlled for ethical climate and found that collective moral potency as a component of the ethical environment, and employees' personal identification with their supervisors fully mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and internal whistleblowing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.
Keywords: ethical leadership, whistleblowing, collective moral potency, personal identification, workplace misconduct.
Given the prevalence and concealment of misconduct in the workplace, whistleblowing is a valuable organizational behavior (Nayir & Herzig, 2012). Encouraging employees to report unethical conduct internally (i.e., whistleblowing) has become an important organizational control mechanism (Miller & Thomas, 2005). However, employee observers of organizational wrongdoing tend to keep silent because of the risk of retaliation by wrongdoers (Zhang, Chiu, & Wei, 2009). An exploration of the factors that promote whistleblowing in an organization may contribute to preventing unethical conduct.
Putting a whistleblowing policy in place will be effective only if organizational leaders provide conditions in which ethical behavior is encouraged and reinforced (Lewis, 2011). Previous researchers have found that ethical leadership is positively related to internal whistleblowing by subordinates (Bhal & Dadhich, 2011; Mayer, Nurmohamed, Treviño, Shapiro, & Schminke, 2013). However, little is known about the process by which ethical leadership promotes whistleblowing by subordinates. Many scholars have examined how leaders can influence employees' ethical behavior by shaping an ethical climate (Treviño, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006), which may provide employees with a foundation for reasoning effectively about the right thing to do (Arnaud & Schminke, 2012). Nevertheless, whistleblowing may also depend on the existence of an ethical context in which unit members collectively assume responsibility (moral ownership), share the belief that they have the ability to perform ethical tasks (moral efficacy), and have the fortitude to face risk and overcome fears (moral courage). These three dimensions...