Balancing Loyalties : A Behavioral Study on how the Quality of Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships Affects Whistleblowing Intentions

While high-quality relationships among employees yield many benefits to organizations, they may have unintended consequences for whistleblowing. In a first experiment, we investigate whether high-quality employee-supervisor relationships reduce employees’ willingness to report supervisor wrongdoing through an internal hotline. We also investigate whether the quality of such relationships mitigates the effect of evidence strength on reporting intention. In a second experiment, we test the robustness of the effects of relationship quality and evidence strength on employees’ willingness to report wrongdoing identified in our first experiment, but to an external auditor. We also examine two factors that may mitigate the negative effect of relationship quality on employees’ reporting intentions: certifying to a code of ethics and employees’ perceptions of the importance of the role of the independent auditor. Our findings suggest that strong employee-supervisor relationships reduce whistleblowing intentions and reduce the positive effect of evidence strength on reporting intentions. Path model results provide evidence that the effect of relationship quality on reporting intentions operates through perceived supervisor culpability and the perception of betraying the supervisor. We also find that employees who are more familiar with the role of independent auditors and believe their work is important are less susceptible to the deleterious effects of relationship quality and are more likely to blow the whistle on their supervisor