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Journal of Business Ethics

Erschienen in:

01.03.2014

The Silent Samaritan Syndrome: Why the Whistle Remains Unblown

verfasst von: Jason MacGregor, Martin Stuebs

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 2/2014

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Abstract

Whistle blowing programs have been central to numerous government, legislative, and regulatory reform efforts in recent years. To protect investors, corporate boards have instituted numerous measures to promote whistle blowing. Despite significant whistle blowing incentives, few individuals blow the whistle when presented with the opportunity. Instead, individuals often remain fallaciously silent and, in essence, become passive fraudsters themselves. Using the fraud triangle and models of moral behavior, we model and analyze fallacious silence and identify factors that may motivate an individual to rationalize fallacious silence. We use a survey of graduate accounting students to test hypothesized factors that contribute to fallacious silence rationalizations in an academic setting. We find evidence that the ability to rationalize fallacious silence is related to community influences and personal traits such as awareness and moral competence.

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For example, in 2012, Harvard University experienced a major scandal involving around 50 percent of the students enrolled in a class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal).

Also known as “inactive observers’’ (Miceli and Near 1992) or ‘‘silent observers’’ (Rothschild and Miethe 1999).

The False Claims Act of 1863 allows whistleblower lawsuits when the government is being defrauded. Whistleblowers are entitled to a portion of assessed penalties. In 1986, Congress made it easier for whistleblowers to bring cases and gave them a larger share of assessed penalties. For example, whistleblowers recently benefited from uncovering widespread mortgage fraud by some of America’s biggest banks (see, http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/02/news/economy/whistleblowers-foreclosure-settlement/index.htm?source=cnn_bin).

Psychological costs can include humiliation, anger, stress, and resentment which can lead to reduced creativity and productivity.

Vandekerckhove and Tsahuridu (2010) argue that the duty to whistleblow cannot be legislated.

For example, Keil et al. (2010) found that the judgments of potential whistleblowers were influenced by risk of detection (i.e., economic incentives), trust in the supervisor and perceived management response (i.e., authoritative social incentives), organizational climate (i.e., collegial social incentives), and duty to report (i.e., moral incentives).

Kohlberg’s (1969) work closely links judgment with incentives. Note that judgments at different stages of moral development are influenced by different types of incentives in Kohlberg’s (1969) model: pre-conventional (motivated by economic self-interest incentives), conventional (motivated by social and legal compliance incentives), post-conventional (motivated by moral incentives of identified duties and obligations).

All students in the graduate program were enrolled in a five-year joint undergraduate/masters’ degree program.

The subject response to the question “How many text messages do you send a month?” Is measured on this scale: 0–15, 16–50, 51–100, 100–500, and more than 500.

The subject response to the question “How often do you use a social network website (such as facebook) a week?” is measured on the following scale: never, once a week, a few times a week, daily, a few time a day, and as much as I can.

The subject response to the question “How many hours per week do you normally spend on other University related activities (clubs, Greek organizations)?” is measured on the following scale: 0–5, 6–10, 11–15, 15–20, 21–25, and more than 25.

The scale’s low point is “not important” and the scale’s high point is “very important”.

Specifically, we ask the subjects “Do you believe this university holds its students to higher standards than other universities would?”

The subject response to the question “How many hours per week do you normally spend on academic work outside of class time?” is measured on the following scale: 0–5, 6–10, 11–15, 15–20, 21–25, and more than 25.

Each statement is measured on a 101-point scale with 0 indicating the statement is “always true” and 100 indicating the statement is “never true”.

See Lennick and Kiel (2005) for the specific statements used to assess MCI.

This is comparable to Christensen et al. (2007)’s reported MCI score in an experiment involving accounting students.

The subject response to the question “How often do you attend worship services or Bible Study?” is assessed on the following scale: Never, On special occasions, Monthly, A few times a month, most weeks, weekly, and multiple times a week.

Specifically, we ask the subjects “Can you imagine a situation when you would cheat?”.

The lack of significant correlations is likely attributable to low variability in the SOC variable. SOC’s low variability also likely affects its mean-difference and regression results.

Given the minimum MCI is 0.59 and the maximum MCI is 0.94, with a coefficient correlation of −0.91, the model indicates the difference between the highest and lowest willingness to remain silent is 0.31 ((0.94–0.59) × 0.91).

Given the minimum RESP is 0.00 and the maximum RESP is 0.88, with a coefficient correlation of −0.39, the model indicates the difference between the highest and lowest willingness to remain silent is 0.34 ((0.88–0.0) × 0.39).

Given the minimum COM is 0.00 and the maximum COM is 1.00, with a coefficient correlation of 0.58, the model indicates the difference between the highest and lowest willingness to remain silent is 0.58 ((1.00–0.00) × 0.58).

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Titel: The Silent Samaritan Syndrome: Why the Whistle Remains Unblown
verfasst von: Jason MacGregor
Martin Stuebs
Publikationsdatum: 01.03.2014
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 2/2014
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1639-9

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