The Impact of Ethical Culture Maturity on Whistleblowing

Organizational culture exists on many levels and can be described by studying organizational structures, policies, rituals, stories and behavioral standards and promoted values. These values guide organizational behavior, decisions and actions and are found at the deepest level of the culture. Whistleblowing, often viewed as a form of organizational dissent, suggests that organizational culture plays a role in employees’ decisions to blow the whistle.

Several models of organizational culture have been developed. An area of commonality between these models is that organizational culture is defined in terms of values, norms and behavior. Values are convictions that people hold about what they believe are important and desirable. In an organizational setting, values are a set of shared beliefs that organizations view as desirable and that should serve as the foundation of all behavior of employees.

Organizational culture provides employees with a sense of identity and affects the way employees interact with each other and other stakeholders. It may also influence how much employees identify with their organization – an important motivation for whistleblowers. Where employees identify strongly with the organizational values and culture, their sense of identity will be threatened by the wrongdoing of others resulting in them acting by reporting the wrongdoers.

A strong ethical organizational culture that creates an environment that facilitates the disclosure of organizational misconduct, is thus an imperative. In strong ethical cultures employees feel that they can rely on the support of manage­ment and colleagues for blowing the whistle. They are also confident that their reports will be taken seriously, be addressed in the appropriate manner and that they will not be victimized for speaking up.

This paper will provide insight into the effect of ethical organizational culture maturity on employees’ willingness to report observed wrongdoing.