Authentic leader and internal whistleblowers: testing a dual mediation mechanism

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to extend the understanding of the role of authentic leadership in encouraging subordinates to become internal whistleblowers. The current study aims to seek whether authentic leadership can encourage internal whistleblowing (IW) through employee controlled motivation for IW and moral courage. Design/methodology/approach The samples of this study were 221 employees working at 26 government organizations in one of the provinces located on Sumatera Island, Indonesia. Based on the cross-sectional survey method, this study used partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis with SmartPLS 3 software to test the hypotheses. Findings The result revealed that employee controlled motivation for whistleblowing and moral courage significantly mediates the effect of authentic leadership toward IW. This result also indicates that the two mediating variables in this study fully mediate the effect of authentic leadership toward IW. Practical implications This study highlights the critical role played by leaders in encouraging subordinates to IW in the workplace. The role of an authentic leader will have positively affected enhancing IW by employees, which has significant implications for the organization that particularly in manage organization wrongdoing in terms of eliminating or preventing unethical practice. Originality/value Theoretically, the current study extends the understanding of the mechanism underlying the relationship between authentic leadership and IW. This study proposes employee controlled motivation for IW and moral courage as the new mediator variables to explain how and why authentic leadership may encourage IW. Empirically, the current study chooses the Indonesian Government as a context that rarely conducts in the prior study.

Authentic Leadership and Whistleblowing: The Mediating Roles of Trust and Moral Courage

“…In this way, employees with high moral courage can determine their value priorities. Prior research has demonstrated how moral courage positively influences employees' ethical behavior, including expressing their ethical concerns, such as reporting fraudulent acts (Anita et al, 2020;Fernando et al, 2021;Sekerka & Bagozzi, 2007). Based on the above discussion, the study puts forth the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 3: Moral courage mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and whistleblowing intention.…”

“…The first section of the questionnaire required the respondents to evaluate the authentic leadership of their supervisors by using sixteen measurement items developed by Avolio et al (2007). The questionnaire was used in several previous studies such as research by Anita et al (2020) and Kutluata et al (2017). The items measured four components of authentic leadership, which were selfawareness, internalized moral processing, balanced information processing, and relational transparency.…”

“…The third section measured the participants' level of moral courage, as adapted from Gibbs et al (1986) and May et al (2014). The questionnaire was used in various previous research such as by Anita et al (2020) and Cheng et al (2019). The scales comprised four-item questions about moral courage.…”

“…In terms of promoting employees' intentions to report fraud internally, several studies provide empirical evidence that authentic leaders improve employees' intention to do internal whistleblowing, e.g. Anita et al (2020), Anugerah et al (2019), andLiu et al (2015). There are several factors why authentic leaders are likely to promote internal whistleblowing among their employees.…”

Ethical Leadership and Knowledge Hiding behavior: Mechanism Moral Identity

“…Ethical leadership: Leadership style has been recognized as having an important role in determining certain work attitudes and behaviors (Eva et al, 2019;Inceoglu et al, 2018). Previous research has revealed that positive leader behavior can shape productive attitudes and behaviors such as OCB (Cooper et al, 2018;Newman et al, 2017), internal whistleblowing (Anita et al, 2021), knowledge-sharing (Abdillah, 2021) and organizational performance (Mallén et al, 2015). EL is described as "the display of normatively appropriate behavior through individual actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of that behavior to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision making" (Den Hartog & Belschak, 2012;Brown & Treviño, 2014;Zaim et al, 2021).…”