How Much You See Is How You Respond: The Curvilinear Relationship Between the Frequency of Observed Unethical Behavior and The Whistleblowing Intention

It is reasonable to expect a diminishing negative relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow internally. The Focus Theory of Normative Conduct as developed by Cialdini and colleagues (Cialdini 2003; Cialdini et al. 1990, 1991) explains that this relationship can be reasonably expected.

According to the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct, there are two kinds of norms relevant for explaining human behavior: injunctive and descriptive norms. Injunctive norms prescribe what ought to be done; they are perceptions about what constitute typically morally approved and disapproved behavior. Descriptive norms describe what is normal; they are characterizations of behaviors that are typically performed. People are influenced in their behavior both by how things should be (the injunctive norms) and how things are (the descriptive norms). Which of these two types of norms has the stronger influence depends on which specific norm is present, most demanding, and most salient for the individual at the time of the behavior; in other words, the norm on which the person focuses at the time. Descriptive norms can influence people’s behavior more than injunctive norms can (Reid and Aiken 2013) because descriptive norms tend to motivate behavior in the immediate context and is more easily observable (Cialdini et al. 2006; Reno et al. 1993). The Focus Theory of Normative Conduct has been useful for studying many types of behavior, such as littering (Cialdini et al. 1990), alcohol consumption (Lee et al. 2007), theft (Cialdini et al. 2006), energy conservation (Schultz et al. 2007), sun protection (Reid and Aiken 2013), seat belt use (Litt et al. 2014), and counterproductive work behaviors (Jacobson et al. 2020).

There are at least two relevant injunctive norms that can influence the whistleblowing intentions of employees. The first injunctive norm refers to the unethical behavior that employees observe and the extent to which that behavior is considered unethical. According to Dozier and Miceli (1985) and Gundlach, Douglas, and Martinko (2003), the whistleblowing decision-making process comprises of at least four steps (which corresponds to the ethical decision-making models proposed by Rest (1986) and Jones (1991)): observing the behavior, analyzing and judging whether the behavior is unethical or not, forming an intention to whistleblow, and engaging in the act of whistleblowing. When employees observe unethical behavior, the question is whether they also analyze and judge it as being unethical. Whether this happens depends on the injunctive norms. The injunctive norms—established for example in laws and regulations, codes of conduct, policies and procedures—may characterize the behavior as unethical. Business codes of ethics are also a source of injunctive norms because they prescribe many different types of behavior as ethical or unethical. Kaptein (2008a) also relied on business codes of ethics to generate the items in his scale for the frequency of observed unethical behavior.

A second relevant injunctive norm refers to the responsibility of employees when they observe unethical behavior at work. Once employees have judged that the observed behavior is unethical, the next question is whether they acknowledge their responsibility to report this (blow the whistle); this is part of the third step in the whistleblowing decision-making process. Many business codes of ethics prescribe that employees who observe unethical behavior in their organization have the moral responsibility to take action to redress the situation (Hassink et al. 2007; Jackson et al. 2010). This is consistent with the literature that considers whistleblowing a positive social behavior (Miceli et al. 2008), altruistic (Dozier and Miceli 1985), as loyalty to society (Andrade 2015), as a moral duty (Ceva and Bocchiola 2020), and as the normative responsibility of employees (Tsahuridu and Vandekerckhove 2008). In many legal jurisdictions, employees also have the legal responsibility to blow the whistle given the law that passive observers can be held liable for not taking adequate action (Tsahuridu and Vandekerckhove 2008). Therefore, when employees observe unethical behavior, injunctive norms do not only prescribe that they should evaluate the behavior as unethical but that they should also disclose and expose it (whistleblow).

Descriptive norms can have an opposite influence from that of injunctive norms in the whistleblowing decision-making process. In an ideal situation, descriptive norms are similar to injunctive norms in the sense that employees observe that colleagues blow the whistle when they evaluate an unethical behavior as unethical. However, when employees observe that not every colleague evaluates an unethical behavior as unethical and/or blows the whistle when they ought to, then descriptive and injunctive norms diverge. The more employees observe that their colleagues do not correctly evaluate unethical behavior and/or do not blow the whistle when they ought to, the more likely that the injunctive and descriptive norms diverge. This means, the more likely employees will believe that the unethical behavior is not entirely unethical or not unethical at all and that they should not always or maybe never whistleblow when they observe what they consider as unethical behavior. Instead of evaluating the observed behavior as unethical, it is whistleblowing about it that is characterized as unethical from a descriptive point of view.

When we use the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct to predict the relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow internally, we expect that the more often employees observe unethical behavior, the less inclined they will be to engage in internal whistleblowing once they are confronted with an unethical behavior. Cialdini et al. (1990, 1991) found that people were more likely to litter themselves when they saw more litters because the descriptive pro-littering norm diverged from the injunctive anti-littering norm. Smith et al. (2012) and Robinson et al. (2014) also found that when injunctive and descriptive norms conflict, people’s intentions to follow the injunctive norms become weaker. The present study is not concerned with whether employees who observe unethical behavior are also more likely to behave unethically themselves. Robinson and O’Leary-Kelly (1998) have studied this topic. We are concerned with whether frequently observing unethical behavior leads to a change in employees’ intention to whistleblow. If employees do not observe unethical behavior in their work, it is more likely that the descriptive norm does not diverge from the injunctive norm because unethical behavior and the descriptive norm “do not whistleblow when unethical behavior is observed” are not salient. If the frequency of observed unethical behavior increases and becomes more salient, then the descriptive norm might become “unethical behavior is the norm.” In addition, the higher the frequency of observed unethical behavior, the more salient this descriptive norm becomes relative to the injunctive norm “ethical behavior is the norm.” So the higher the frequency of observed unethical behavior, the more likely employees will think that unethical behavior is normal and that whistleblowing about unethical behavior is abnormal (because one only blows the whistle on behavior that is supposed to be not normal or not accepted). This would then make it less likely that employees will form the intention to whistleblow internally when they are confronted with unethical behavior.

It is reasonable to expect that the relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and internal whistleblowing is diminishingly negative. The study of Cialdini et al. (1990) helps illustrate this point. The study found that the more litter there is in the surrounding (in their case, flyers that were thrown on the ground), the more likely people will also litter. However, this effect was diminishing in that as the amount of litter increased, the less difference each additional piece of litter made on the likelihood that people littered and that given a certain amount of litter (in their case eight flyers lying on the ground), additional pieces of litter did not lead to more people who littered. In the study, everyone already having littered did not explain this last point, because almost 60% of the participants did not litter when there were eight flyers lying on the ground. We can also expect that the more unethical behavior employees observe, the less any incremental increase in observations will influence their intention to blow the whistle internally. The reason for this diminishing effect is that one or a few more observations of unethical behavior has a larger contribution to the salience of the descriptive norm “unethical behavior is normal and blowing the whistle is abnormal” than when more observations of unethical behavior are added to an already large number of observations of unethical behavior. The higher the frequency of observed unethical behavior, the more it confirms to the employees that the descriptive norm is “blowing the whistle internally is not normal” and the less it changes the descriptive norm. Furthermore, we expect that a high frequency of observed unethical behavior does not lead to the situation where nobody in the organization would have any intention to blow the whistle internally. Even when employees observe unethical behavior very frequently, the injunctive norms could still be acknowledged and influential, although they might be less strong than when they converge with the descriptive norms. Jacobson et al. (2020) shows that descriptive and injunctive norms can exert independent effects on behavior even when one of the two norms has a stronger influence because the weaker norm can nevertheless influence a behavior when it triggers within the person an awareness of that norm. Moreover, the personal norms of employees, which differ from injunctive and descriptive norms in that they refer to individual-level standards rather than the standards of social groups (Niemiec et al. 2020), may explain why employees are less or not influenced by their social context and keep to their intention to whistleblow internally even when they very frequently observe unethical behavior. Therefore, we formulate our first hypothesis:

A different relationship holds between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow externally.

An injunctive norm may prescribe that when employees observe unethical behavior, they first have to consider internal whistleblowing before they decide to do it externally. Current laws, business codes of ethics, and whistleblowing policies prescribe that employees should first report the wrongdoing internally (Hassink et al. 2007; Tsahuridu and Vandekerckhove 2008). This prescription is also supported by the literature: i.e., internal whistleblowing is considered to stimulate more self-control (Miceli et al. 1991), self-efficacy (Miceli et al. 2001), and self-diagnosis (Chen and Lai 2014) and tends to be less damaging for the organization and colleagues (Nayir et al. 2018) compared to external whistleblowing. Employees who straightaway go to the press when they observe for the first time a small incident at work cannot be considered ethical from the point of view of the above-mentioned injunction. However, injunctive norms do not forbid external whistleblowing but may consider it as morally justified or even required under certain conditions: e.g., when internal whistleblowing does not lead to the right follow-up action in the organization, the unethical behavior is serious, there is sufficient evidence about the unethical behavior, or when it is reasonably certain that external whistleblowing will stop the unethical behavior (De George 1990; Velasquez 1998).

Descriptive norms can also suggest to employees that they should first report internally before doing it externally. As gathered from the literature (Callahan and Collins 1992; Mansbach and Bachner 2010; Miceli et al. 2008; Miceli and Near 2002; Rothschild and Miethe 1999; Vandekerckhove and Phillips 2019), employees are more likely to blow the whistle internally before doing it externally. Two of the reasons whistleblowers give for going external are their lack of trust in their organization stopping the unethical behavior and their belief that only an external party can stop the unethical behavior (Dworkin and Baucus 1998; Miceli et al. 2008). Employees judge internal whistleblowing more favorably than external whistleblowing (Culiberg and Mihelič 2017). The latter is often seen as an extension of the whistleblowing process in case internal whistleblowing does not bring about the expected responses (Miceli and Near 1992; Vandekerckhove and Phillips 2019). Therefore, employees who decide to reveal unethical behavior are more likely to do it internally first.

We can assume that the more frequently employees observe unethical behavior, the more they will be inclined towards external whistleblowing. The more frequently employees observe unethical behavior in their organization, the more likely they will believe that unethical behavior is (considered) normal in their organization, that internal whistleblowing is less expected, appreciated, or approbated, and thus the less inclined they will be to blow the whistle internally when they witness unethical behavior. Furthermore, the less inclined employees are to report the wrongdoing internally, the more external whistleblowing becomes their only option. The option to externally whistleblow thus becomes more salient the more frequently employees observe unethical behavior. This makes unethical behavior a bigger problem in the organization because employees observe not just a single isolated incident but rather a pattern of different types of unethical behavior (Callahan and Dworkin 1992; Near and Miceli 1995). The more serious the problem of unethical behavior becomes for the organization, the stronger becomes the injunctive norm that employees should reveal the problem externally because the organization appears unable to solve the problem by itself. In this case, the salience of the conflict between the descriptive norm (that unethical behavior is normal within the organization) and the injunctive norm (that employees should expose unethical behavior when they observe it) also becomes more salient. This conflict then becomes a reason for resorting to external whistleblowing. At this point, the reporting is no longer just about one or a few incidents of unethical behavior but concerns a pattern of unethical behavior supported by the descriptive norm in the organization that unethical behavior is normal. We can therefore expect that the more frequently employees observe unethical behavior in their organization, the more they will be inclined towards external whistleblowing. We can also expect this relationship to be linear: every increase in the frequency of observed unethical behavior makes it clearer to employees that external whistleblowing is the only or final option for addressing the unethical behavior and that they have the responsibility to engage in this option. This leads to the next hypothesis:

We may expect a curvilinear relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow when we combine the expected relationships for the intentions to internally and externally whistleblow. The relationship is expected to be U-shaped because employees who have only observed a single incident of unethical behavior will not or less likely have the belief that internal whistleblowing is not appreciated or effective, and therefore they will be more inclined to blow the whistle internally rather than externally. However, as stated above, the more frequently employees observe unethical behavior, the less they are inclined to blow the whistle internally and the more they are inclined to do it externally. We then expect the intention to pursue internal whistleblowing to become weaker more quickly than the intention to whistleblow externally becomes stronger. The reason for this is that not every employee who is no longer inclined to internally whistleblow will necessarily have the intention to do it externally (Kaptein 2011; Vandekerckhove and Phillips 2019). For example, external whistleblowing is riskier and more time-consuming for employees than internal whistleblowing (Dozier and Miceli 1985; Dworkin and Baucus 1998). A U-shaped relationship implies that the intention to blow the whistle is strongest among employees when their frequency of observed unethical behavior is relatively low (when they are most inclined to whistleblow internally) or high (when they are most inclined to whistleblow externally). Therefore, the third hypothesis is:

How the frequency of observed unethical behavior influences the intention of employees to whistleblow depends on how employees interpret that frequency. As explained above, employees infer from the frequency with which they observe unethical behavior what the descriptive norms are. Their beliefs about how management will deal with their whistleblowing reports are expected to influence how they interpret that frequency. In the whistleblowing literature, how management handles whistleblowing is referred to as supervisor or (top) management support (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran 2005; Sims and Keenan 1998). This concept is related to the broader one of perceived organizational support (Eisenberger et al. 1986), which is about the global beliefs employees develop concerning the extent to which the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. In our case, management support is about the extent to which employees believe that management values whistleblowing reports and cares about whistleblowers.

Management support or trust in management (Cassematis and Wortley 2013) is important for understanding the intention of employees to whistleblow. Management support concerns the expectations of employees about the extent to which management will take appropriate action (Miceli and Near 1994a, b), handle the report confidentially (Miceli et al. 2008), protect the whistleblower from retaliation (Cho and Song 2015; Detert and Burris 2007), discipline the perpetrator(s) fairly and consistently (Keenan 1990), and will ensure that the whistleblowing report is useful and effective in the sense that the unethical behavior will be “terminated at least partly…and within a reasonable time frame” (Near and Miceli 1995, p. 681). Research confirms the importance of management support for whistleblowing. A meta-analytic research by Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran (2005) shows that management support positively influences employees’ whistleblowing intentions. Near et al. (2004) found among employees of a US military base that the most frequent reason given for not blowing the whistle was the belief that managers could or would not make any changes and that the wrongdoing would continue unabated. The second most frequent reason they found was the fear of reprisal (cf. Near and Miceli 2016). For the whistleblowers, the most common reprisals were poor performance appraisals and tighter scrutiny of their daily activities by management. Keil et al. (2010) report that trust in managers was the most influential predictor of IT employees’ intention to whistleblow.

We assume that if employees believe that management supports whistleblowing, then the frequency of unethical behavior will have no impact on their intention to blow the whistle internally. High management support prevents employees from interpreting an increase in the frequency of observed unethical behavior as an absence of appreciation for whistleblowing. However, when management support is low, high frequency of observed unethical behavior makes this lack of support salient, thereby strengthening the descriptive norm that whistleblowing is not appreciated and increasingly weakening the intention of employees to whistleblow internally. Miceli et al. (2001) refer to this as the signaling effect that observations of unethical behavior has regarding the organization’s response to unethical behavior and the chances of successful whistleblowing in that context. When management support is high, high frequency of observed unethical behavior makes this support salient, thereby strengthening the descriptive norm that whistleblowing is appreciated and reinforcing the intention of employees to whistleblow internally. Employees may then, for example, interpret the high frequency of unethical behavior as their organization struggling to prevent unethical behavior sufficiently, and they may feel stimulated, due to high management support, to disclose any observed unethical behavior to help their organization and management in this effort. Therefore, we expect management support for whistleblowers to moderate the relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention of employees to engage in internal whistleblowing.

Regarding external whistleblowing, we can expect management support to also moderate the relationship with the frequency of observed unethical behavior. The above-formulated Hypothesis 2 holds that when the frequency of observed unethical behavior increases, employees will be more inclined towards external whistleblowing. Management support is supposed to moderate this relationship in the sense that when employees believe management support for whistleblowing is low, an increase in observed unethical behavior will influence their inclination to whistleblow externally less than when they believe management support is high. The Focus Theory of Normative Conduct again provides an explanation for this moderation effect. When there is low management support, an increase in the frequency of observed unethical behavior makes more salient the descriptive norm “unethical behavior is normal and blowing the whistle is abnormal.” The higher the frequency of unethical behavior when management support is low, the more it is emphasized to employees that management accepts or even appreciates unethical behavior. High management support implies that management would take action to combat unethical behavior because the more unethical behavior takes place, the more it becomes a serious, urgent, and undeniable problem. The belief of employees that their management accepts unethical behavior encourages their belief that whistleblowing is less appreciated or even not accepted in their organization. The more salient this descriptive norm is, the more it discourages the intention of employees to externally whistleblow. When management does not combat unethical behavior internally, employees may not consider themselves in the position—because they are hierarchically lower than management—to combat unethical behavior through external whistleblowing. Employees may also believe that they run more personal risks when management support is low than when it is high. When management support is low, there will presumably be stronger disapproval for external than for internal whistleblowing because the former involves informing a party outside the organization not only about the unethical behavior but also about the low management support within the organization. In this case, management may consider external whistleblowing as disloyalty to management (cf. Nayir et al. 2018) and therefore is more likely to take measures against employees who whistleblow externally (Dozier and Miceli 1985). While low management support restrains the inclination of employees to blow the whistle externally, we still expect that an increase in the frequency of observed unethical behavior will lead to a stronger inclination to externally whistleblow because, as argued above, the more unethical behavior employees observe, the stronger becomes the injunctive norm that they should report externally.

For whistleblowing in general, management support for whistleblowing is expected to moderate the relationship with the frequency of observed unethical behavior. Combining the above-described expected moderating role of management support in the relationships of frequency of observed unethical behavior with both internal and external whistleblowing, we can then infer that management support should also have a moderating role in the relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and whistleblowing in general. This leads to our final hypotheses:

To test our six hypotheses, we needed a large and diverse sample of participants. Some types of intended responses, such as external whistleblowing, may be rare, and so the larger the sample, the higher the likelihood of finding such responses (cf. Cassematis and Wortley 2013). A variety of respondents working in different settings were needed to get a higher variance in the number of observed unethical behavior (cf. Culiberg and Mihelič 2017). If the study were conducted in an organization where respondents have the same frequencies of observed unethical behavior, then we would not find any relationships because the independent variable would be constant. A diverse group of respondents also helps in finding widely applicable results. With this in mind, we collected data from the working population of the USA. With the assistance of the panel-database firm EMI-Online Research Solutions and KPMG, we compiled a sample of adults working full-time for organizations that employ at least 200 people in 16 selected industries spread throughout the USA. The privately registered, pre-screened members of the panel received a nominal financial reward for their participation. We excluded respondents who did not answer all questions or who gave very unrealistic answers. An example of unrealistic answer is giving all 37 items of the unethical behavior scale (the independent variable) the same answers (excluding the never and always options). The data collection yielded 3075 usable surveys, with a wide variety of demographics.¹

This study points to several possible research directions to build a richer model for a better understanding of the whistleblowing decision-making process.

One possible research is to examine whether the frequency of different types of unethical behavior has different relationships with the intentions of employees to whistleblow. The current study examined general unethical behavior and used an aggregated score for the frequency of observed unethical behavior. While we found a significant relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior in general and the intention to whistleblow, the relationship may be different for different kinds of unethical behavior. For example, do the frequency of observed unethical behavior towards the organization, such as stealing company assets, and the frequency of observed unethical behavior towards external stakeholders, such as engaging in false or deceptive sales and marketing practices, have different relationships with the intention of employees to whistleblow? We may find that a higher frequency of observed unethical behavior towards the organization leads to stronger intentions to whistleblow internally because the interests of the organization are at stake, while a higher frequency of unethical behavior towards external stakeholders leads to stronger intentions to whistleblow externally because the interest of those stakeholders are at stake.

Another interesting research direction concerns the relation between the frequency and moral intensity of unethical behavior. Jones’ (1991) six characteristics of the moral intensity of ethical dilemmas for understanding ethical decision-making have been applied to unethical behavior to understand whistleblowing decision-making. One of the contributions of our study is the introduction of frequency of (unethical) behavior as another relevant characteristic. Having studied the frequency of unethical behavior as a separate characteristic does not imply that it is not related to or part of any of Jones’ six characteristics. In this article, we already argued that a higher frequency of observed unethical behavior in an organization may make unethical behavior a more serious issue in that organization (this is the characteristic of the “magnitude of consequences”) and more accepted (this is the characteristic of the “social consensus”). In this regard, future research can examine whether the frequency of unethical behavior is indeed related to these two characteristics or perhaps to the other characteristics as well (i.e., probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect) of the moral intensity of unethical behavior. A related question is whether the frequency of unethical behavior has also a direct influence on the intention to whistleblow or maybe only an indirect influence through Jones’s six characteristics. Even if the results would show that the frequency of unethical behavior is not a separate characteristic but only part of the other six characteristics, the current study still makes this contribution: i.e., the concept of moral intensity should not be restricted to one single incident of unethical behavior, but it should be related to any and all unethical behavior observed by an employee.

Another possible research direction concerns the recipients of whistleblowing reports. Our study included four types of such recipients. It would be interesting to include more specific recipients of external whistleblowing reports, such as a regulator, professional associations, or the press, and other internal recipients, such as different layers of management and supporting functions as HR, Legal, and Security. By including more recipients, the explanatory power of the model increases. In this respect, the response scale used in this study for the intention to whistleblow could also be enriched. Because we asked the respondents their intentions to whistleblow to each type of recipient, we were not able to establish the sequence by which employees would approach the different recipients; this is important, for example, to understand whether employees will first whistleblow internally before they do so externally. This sequential process of reporting to different recipients is well examined by Vandekerckhove and Phillips (2019). When redoing the current research, respondents could also be asked about their intended sequence of whistleblowing recipients.

More moderating variables may also be included to explain the relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow. The current study found that management support for whistleblowing, operationalized as the belief of employees of how managers respond to reports of unethical behavior, had a significant moderating effect. It could be investigated whether other factors, for instance preventive ones like a corporate ethics program, are relevant for how employees respond to the frequency of observed unethical behavior.

An interesting research direction pertains to the use of time-frames, other than the twelve months used in the current study, for observed unethical behavior. Because unethical behavior is not observed very frequently—its mean in our study was 1.55 on a five-point scale for 37 items—extending the time frame to two or more years would increase the variance and provide more room to build rich models. A longer time frame could also take into account the experience employees have with whistleblowing better than a one-year time frame could. As the follow-up and completion of a whistleblowing report can take a long period (Vandekerckhove and Phillips 2019), employees will be able to evaluate their management’s support for whistleblowing better over a longer period than over a one-year period. Furthermore, employees could use the period after completing their whistleblowing report to get an idea about management support for whistleblowing: if after reporting, the frequency of observed unethical behavior does not change or even increases, then this could undermine their belief in their management’s support for whistleblowing; if the reported unethical behavior does not happen again over a long period, this could improve their belief in their management’s support for whistleblowing.

Another research direction for building a richer model to help us understand better the whistleblowing decision-making process is to examine the relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention of employees to whistleblow in the opposite direction than the one taken by the current study. The current study examined the influence of the frequency of observed unethical behavior on the intention of employees to whistleblow but not on the whistleblowing behavior itself. We have good reasons for this, as discussed above in the section Whistleblowing and Unethical Behavior. At the same time, we should not expect that intentions to whistleblow always translate into actual whistleblowing behavior (cf. Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran 2005; Park and Blenkinsopp 2009). In cases when the intention to whistleblow leads to whistleblowing behavior, an interesting research question is whether whistleblowing behavior also leads to less unethical behavior. This relationship could be explained by the idea that successful whistleblowing does not only lead to the termination of the reported unethical behavior but also to the confirmation or strengthening of the descriptive norm in the organization that unethical behavior is not allowed and even disapproved, which stimulates employees to not behave unethically. The same may be asked about the moderating variable in this study: whether management support for whistleblowing leads to less unethical behavior. This relationship could be explained by the idea that employees who consider behaving unethically are deterred by their belief that their management will not accept unethical behavior and will take adequate actions towards the perpetrator when they find out about these unethical behaviors. Employees may also expect that their management is more likely to be informed about unethical behavior in the organization because others in the organization who observe unethical behavior and believe that management will handle their whistleblowing reports well are more willing to report such behavior to management.

A final research direction to be mentioned here is the search for other theories that can enrich our understanding about the relationship between the frequency of unethical behavior and whistleblowing. This article used the Theory of Normative Conduct (Cialdini et al. 1991) to explain this relationship. Although this theory helped develop our hypotheses, other theories may add explanatory power. One possible theory is the moral approbation theory developed by Jones and Verstegen Ryan (1997, 1998). Jones and Verstegen Ryan argue that moral approbation, the desire of moral agents to be seen as moral by themselves or others, plays a critical role in moral decision-making. This moral approbation has two facets. One is a desired level of moral approbation, which consists of, for example, a desire for moral approval from the agent’s referent group. Second is an anticipated level of moral approbation, which depends on the level of moral responsibility the agent anticipates will be attributed to him/her by the agent’s referent group. A desired level of moral approbation could be used to explain why an increase in the frequency of observed unethical behavior leads to weakening of employees’ intention to blow the whistle internally. For instance, that the unethical behavior continues or is not corrected indicates that it is approbated. An anticipated level of moral approbation could be used to explain why employees are more intent to whistleblow externally when they observe unethical behavior more frequently. For instance, that the more frequently employees do not stop or correct the unethical behavior they observe, the more others outside the organization will see them as complicit, thus stimulating their sense of responsibility to stop and correct the behavior by reporting it to people outside their organization. Another potentially useful theory is the Corporate Ethical Virtues Theory (Kaptein 2008b) because it can help understand better how employees interpret unethical behavior in terms of the current ethical culture in their organization. The Neutralization Theory (Maruna and Copes 2005) or Moral Disengagement Theory (Bandura 1999) can explain how employees may increasingly rationalize or justify their inaction when they observe unethical behavior more frequently.

This study showed that the more frequently employees observe unethical behavior, the less they have the intention to whistleblow internally and the more they have the intention to whistleblow externally. These findings provide further reasons that strengthen the importance of management preventing unethical behavior (Paine 1994; Treviño and Weaver 2003). First, unethical behavior is not only undesirable in and of itself but it also has negative consequences. When employees’ intention to whistleblow internally becomes weaker or disappears due to a higher frequency of observed unethical behavior, it becomes less likely that employees will actually inform management when they witness unethical behavior. It then also becomes less likely that management will be able to stop and correct unethical behavior, whereas this becomes even more urgent with higher frequency of observed unethical behavior. Second, a higher frequency of observed unethical behavior also means that employees’ intention to whistleblow externally becomes stronger. Because unethical behavior would be reported not to management but to recipients outside of the organization, this would mean management losing control or charge of stopping and correcting unethical behavior. Quite possibly, as a result, external agencies would question and investigate management for its failure to adequately prevent and redress such unethical behavior.

This study also showed that employees’ beliefs about how management will handle their whistleblowing reports influence whether they will blow the whistle when they frequently observe unethical behavior and whether they would do it internally or externally. Management support for whistleblowing was operationalized in terms of the expectations of employees about the extent to which their management would take appropriate action when it receives whistleblowing reports, would handle reports confidentially, protect whistleblowers from retaliation, discipline the perpetrator(s) fairly and consistently, and would ensure the usefulness and effectiveness of whistleblowing reports, say, by eliminating reported unethical behavior within a reasonable time frame. An important managerial implication of our study is that convincing employees that their management meets these expectations prevents the weakening of employees’ internal whistleblowing intention when they increasingly observe unethical behavior in their organization. This is the good news. The bad news is that this particular intention becomes weaker if employees are not convinced. So hopefully managers will respond well to the findings of this study by responding appropriately to their employees’ reports about unethical behavior in organization.