To Blow the Whistle or Not: The Roles of Perceived Organizational Retaliation and Upward Communication Satisfaction in Employee Responses to Observed Wrongdoing

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.