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Interest in managing ethical business behavior continues to grow as businesses struggle with the costs of unethical behavior in the workplace. One type of unethical behavior that is particularly costly and difficult to manage is employee theft. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that workplace theft costs U.S. businesses up to $40 billion each year and employees are thought to be responsible for much of this unethical behavior (Caudill, 1988; Zemke, 1986). Controlling employee theft is a formidable management problem in large part because it is so difficult to detect. And, although co-workers are more likely than supervisors to be aware of employee theft, powerful work group norms that promote group loyalty and discourage "tattling" inhibit them from reporting others' misconduct to management (Greenberger et al., 1987).
Trevino and Victor (1992) have conceptualized peer reporting as a specific kind of whistle-blowing behavior (Near and Miceli, 1985). Whistleblowing generally refers to an employee's disclosure of perceived wrongdoing in the organization. However, the whistle-blowing literature has focused primarily on reporting the wrongdoing of superiors rather than the wrongdoing of peers. Reporting a peer's wrongdoing to higher authorities may be more difficult than reporting a superior (Cerrato, 1988) because of group norms against reporting peers' misconduct (Greenberger et al., 1987) and because of stronger identification and empathy with the peer (Randall and Gibson, 1991). This study explores the conditions under which a work group member is more likely to engage in this risky behavior in order to assist management.
This study differs from previous work in several important ways. First, unlike previous studies that have focused primarily on the intentions (Randall and Gibson, 1991) or inclinations to peer report (Trevino and Victor, 1992), this study investigates both inclinations and peer reporting behavior. Second, this study invokes a justice perspective to suggest that peer reporting behavior is a positive behavioral reaction to justice evaluations, in addition to being influenced by previously studied social context factors. Finally, this study considers the influence of retributive justice, a variable that has been discussed conceptually, but that has not yet been incorporated into empirical work.
JUSTICE EVALUATIONS AND PEER REPORTING BEHAVIOR
Employees' justice evaluations may influence their willingness to report a peer. Peer reporting is frequently considered an extra-role behavior in that it...