The issues of organizational wrongdoing damage organizational performance and limit the development of organizations. Although organizational members may know the wrongdoing and have the opportunity to blow the whistle, they would keep silent because of the interpersonal risks. However, leaders can play an important role in shaping employee whistleblowing. This study focuses on discovering the mechanisms of how authentic leaders influence employee whistleblowing with a sample from China. Results demonstrate that authentic leadership is positively related to internal whistleblowing. Team psychological safety partly mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and internal whistleblowing. Personal identification partly mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and internal whistleblowing. The study contributes to the extant theory by filling the gap between leadership and whistleblowing.

We explored the mechanism of the effects of transformational leadership on employees' speaking up (voice), especially probing the moderating effects of power distance and structural distance. We used a questionnaire to conduct an investigation with dyads of leaders (113 senior engineers and 51 project managers) and their subordinates (495 engineers). The results from hierarchical regression modeling indicated that, in the relationship between transformational leadership and employees' speaking up, structural distance was a positive moderator but power distance was a negative and stronger moderator than structural distance. Implications of these results for theory and management practice are discussed.