Search results

Research on whistle-blowing has focused on the questions of who blows the whistle, who experiences retaliation, and who is effective in stopping wrongdoing. In this article, we review research pertinent to the first of these questions. Since the last known review (Near & Miceli, 1996), there have been important theoretical and, to a lesser extent, empirical developments. In addition, the U.S. law is changing dramatically, which may serve to promote valid whistle-blowing, and international interest in whistle-blowing is widespread and increasing. Unfortunately, evidence strongly suggests that media, popular, and regulatory interest is far outpacing the growth of careful scholarly inquiry into the topic, which is a disturbing trend. Here, we argue that the primary causes of the underdevelopment of the empirical literature are methodological, and that workable solutions are needed but very difficult to implement. By calling attention to these issues, we hope to help encourage more research on whistle-blowing.

Organizational wrongdoing is still very much prevalent in today’s society. Traditional and social media are full of examples of organizations engaging in unethical or illegal behavior. While it is difficult – if not impossible – to establish whether the ever-increasing number of reported cases of wrongdoing is due to an actual increase in the phenomenon (objectivist view of wrongdoing) or to more attention being paid to it (social-constructivist view of wrongdoing), the fact remains that organizational wrongdoing seems to have become the norm rather than an exception in our everyday life. This is concerning, as organizational wrongdoing tends to undermine trust in fundamental institutions, such as the Market, the State, Religion, and Law, and may lead to them being replaced by other – sometimes less desirable – institutions or create an “institutional void.” Because of its potential impact on established institutions, organizational wrongdoing deserves to be closely monitored and further examined. This volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations is an attempt to draw attention to the theoretical and empirical relevance of the topic, consolidate and extend the knowledge accumulated in this area of research, and highlight potential direction for future research. The volume explores in particular the definitions and antecedents of organizational wrongdoing.

Organizational wrongdoing is still very much prevalent in today’s society. Traditional and social media are full of examples of organizations engaging in unethical or illegal behavior. While it is difficult – if not impossible – to establish whether the ever-increasing number of reported cases of wrongdoing is due to an actual increase in the phenomenon (objectivist view of wrongdoing) or to more attention being paid to it (social-constructivist view of wrongdoing), the fact remains that organizational wrongdoing seems to have become the norm rather than an exception in our everyday life. This is concerning, as organizational wrongdoing tends to undermine trust in fundamental institutions, such as the Market, the State, Religion, and Law, and may lead to them being replaced by other – sometimes less desirable – institutions or create an “institutional void.” Because of its potential impact on established institutions, organizational wrongdoing deserves to be closely monitored and further examined. This volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations is an attempt to draw attention to the theoretical and empirical relevance of the topic, consolidate and extend the knowledge accumulated in this area of research, and highlight potential direction for future research. The volume focuses in particular on the variegated consequences and impact of organizational wrongdoing.

When reporting wrongdoing internally, whistleblowers are confronted with the dilemma of weighing up their loyalty toward the organization (e.g., ethical standards) and their co-workers (e.g., the social norm of not snitching on peers). However, the role played by peers in the whistleblowing decision process and in the aftermath has rarely been addressed in existing reviews. We therefore perform a systematic review that identifies seven thematic clusters of peer factors, offering researchers an informative overview of (a) the peer factors that have been examined to influence the whistleblowing decision, and (b) the extent to which the whistleblower experiences adverse consequences from peers in the aftermath of whistleblowing. As peer factors seem to be important to explain and predict internal whistleblowing, researchers are encouraged to address in future works the research gaps our review unraveled.

The growth of research into whistle-blowing has produced some compelling insights into this important organizational phenomenon, but a number of areas remain under-explored, particularly the role of emotion and our understanding of the far more common response to wrongdoing, namely inaction. In this chapter we seek to problematize current conceptualizations of whistle-blowing and wrongdoing, as a basis for examining employee silence in the face of wrongdoing. We suggest that quiescent silence can be viewed as an emotion episode, and draw upon the feedback theory and the sensemaking paradigm to develop this proposition, illustrated through an analysis of accounts of quiescent silence in a clinical setting. We propose a new concept of “cues for inaction” which offers insights into the way quiescent silence arises and persists.

The act of reporting illegal and unethical practices in the workplace has become an increasingly important issue for researchers and organizational management over the past several decades. This study tested a model of whistleblowing in which perceived organizational retaliation and upward communication satisfaction were hypothesized to act as predictors of types of whistleblowing intentions using a representative sample of employees working in Kirklareli, Turkey (n = 1,012). Structural equation modeling indicated that perceptions of upward communication satisfaction were positively associated to blowing the whistle to internal channels like immediate supervisor and upper management and negatively related to staying silent and external whistleblowing. In addition, perceived threat of retaliation from an organization was negatively related to blowing the whistle to internal channels and positively related to staying silent and external whistleblowing. The present study has contributed to our understanding of whistleblowing in a relatively new national context by clarifying its associations with perceived organizational retaliation and communication with management.

Organizational wrongdoing researchers often look to past cases to empirically develop and support theoretical understanding. Their research is therefore conducted at a temporal distance to focal events and frequently relies on retrospective accounts and surviving documentary evidence. These methodological circumstances define historical research practice, and we demonstrate in this paper the valuable insights that historical approaches can provide organizational wrongdoing research. Specifically, we draw on a range of practices from history and the social sciences to introduce four historically informed approaches: narrative history, analytically structured history, historical process study, short-term process study. We differentiate these based on their particular affordances and treatment of two key methodological considerations: historical evidence and temporality. We demonstrate the specific value these approaches represent to organizational wrongdoing research with several exemplars showing how they have been used in related fields of research.

In this paper, we investigate the process by which social control agents define wrongdoing over time and the principles they employ in drawing the boundary between right and wrong. We empirically examine how Italian state actors sought over four decades to categorize behaviors in the so-called “gray area,” i.e., the conduct of individuals supportive of the mafia organization Cosa Nostra and its criminal aims, but not members of the organization. Based on an archival analysis of texts produced since the 1960s, we reconstruct how state actors started from a preliminary definition of wrongdoing, moved to stigmatize the behaviors in question on moral grounds, and ultimately criminalized them with legal sanctions. We conceptualize the main principles behind this evolving categorization as intentionality of conduct, freedom of choice, and scope of harm. The paper contributes to the debate on the factors and conditions shaping the definition of wrongdoing over time and the contribution that social control agents provide to this aim.

The Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal was one of the largest examples of organizational wrongdoing in corporate history, costing the firm immense damage to its reputation and over $33 billion in fines, penalties, financial settlements, and buyback costs. In this paper, we draw on the concept of boundary work to provide insight into the causes of wrongdoing at VW. Supplementing other work on the scandal, we show how the ways in which boundaries became established in the organization resulted in an internal context that defined “in” and “out” groups, normalized certain behaviors, and limited communication across intraorganizational boundaries. This allowed wrongdoing to not only become established but also to go unchallenged. We provide contributions to broader understandings of organizational wrongdoing and to the temporal unfolding of boundary work by theorizing how a combination of cognitive, horizontal, and vertical boundaries can create an infrastructure of organizational design that permits organizational wrongdoing, prevents it being challenged, and ultimately normalizes it in everyday activities.

Given the conflicting attitudes that people have toward those who report wrongdoing and a lack of empirical research specifically examining subsequent hiring, it is an open question as to whether accounting professionals would want to work with former whistleblowers. The authors examine this question using an experimental design, in which participants evaluate an employment candidate before and after the person discloses having been a whistleblower. Four manipulations of whistleblowing are used in both a within-subjects and a between-subjects manipulation. The authors’ results demonstrate that accounting professionals’ intentions to recommend a candidate for hire decrease after they are informed that a strong candidate has a whistleblowing past. A candidate is viewed most negatively, however, when discovering malfeasance and electing not to blow the whistle internally. Moreover, when the whistle is blown internally and the superior takes no action, the candidate who remained silent and chose not to continue to push the issue is viewed more negatively than the candidate who proceeded to blow the whistle externally. Although a candidate having a whistleblowing past appears to pose a cautionary signal in the interview process, participants reacted more harshly when the candidate failed to act or lacked the durable moral courage to see the matter through to completion.