Ethical Climate Theory, Whistle-blowing, and the Code of Silence in Police Agencies in the State of Georgia

Abstract

This article reports the findings from a study that investigates the relationship between ethical climates and police whistle-blowing on five forms of misconduct in the State of Georgia. The results indicate that a friendship or team climate generally explains willingness to blow the whistle, but not the actual frequency of blowing the whistle. Instead, supervisory status, a control variable investigated in previous studies, is the most consistent predictor of both willingness to blow the whistle and frequency of blowing the whistle. Contrary to popular belief, the results also generally indicate that police are more inclined than civilian employees to blow the whistle in Georgia – in other words, they are less inclined to maintain a code of silence. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007Ethical Climate Theory, whistle-blowing, code of silence, Georgia, United States,

From Inaction to External Whistleblowing: The Influence of the Ethical Culture of Organizations on Employee Responses to Observed Wrongdoing

“…Low explained variances were also found in other studies of contextual stimuli for whistleblowing conducted by King (1997), Lee et al (2004), Miceli and Near (2002), Rothwell and Baldwin (2007), and Victor et al (1993). On the one hand, several other individual and situational factors could be added to better explain and predict employees" response to observed wrongdoing.…”

“…An ethics hotline is usually considered as a channel to report wrongdoing when local management is implicated in the wrongdoing or when previous reports of wrongdoing were handled unsatisfactorily. Employees who call an ethics hotline are in fact blowing the whistle on their immediate superiors (Elliston, 1982) as supervisors are often held responsible for the misdemeanors of their subordinates (Rothwell & Baldwin, 2007). The greater the congruency of local management, the less likely employees are to contact the ethics hotline and the more likely they are to notify their supervisor or other local manager.…”

“…Reporting wrongdoing is to make things discussable; to break through communication barriers (Miceli et al, 2008b). In organizations with a low level of discussability, where a "code of silence" (Rothwell & Baldwin, 2007) or an atmosphere prevails that is antagonistic to the exposure of wrongdoing (Miceli & Near, 2002), employees will believe that dissidence and speaking up is undesirable (Miceli & Near, 1984). In organizations with a low level of discussability, the messenger of wrongdoing will be retaliated against and the focus misdirected from resolving the wrongdoing to redressing, reprising and resenting the messenger (Keenan, 1990;Miceli & Near, 1994).…”

Organizational stressors and police performance

“…When officers are consistently excluded from the decisionmaking process, cast aside and told by their boss "do as I say, not as I do," it seems inevitable they will reciprocate when dealing with the public. Several scholars across different disciplines and contextual settings (Brandes, Dharwadkar, and Wheatley, 2004;Eskew, 1993;Frost, 1994;Moorman, Neihoff, and Organ, 1993:209;Mosher, 1968:17-18;Pateman, 1975:2;Rothwell and Baldwin, 2007) note the benefits of participatory management, democratic decision-making and social exchange:…”

On the appropriateness of research design: Intended and actual whistleblowing

“…These findings are replicated in recent research: Bjørkelo and colleagues found that respondents holding a leadership position or who were union or Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) representatives were more likely to report wrongdoing at work (Bjørkelo et al 2011). Similarly, Rothwell and Baldwin (2007) found that supervisory status was a consistent predictor of both willingness and frequency of whistleblowing. With respect to age and tenure, Stansbury and Victor (2009) found that young and short-tenured employees were less likely to have blown the whistle.…”