Whistleblowing Motivation and Gender: Vignette-Based Study in a Local Government

Abstract

Public administration literature has been building more evidence about whistleblowing and gender, and whistleblowing and public service motivation. Yet, despite the well-developed theoretical argument of the socialization effect on public service motivation and gender, little effort has been undertaken to study their simultaneous relationships with whistleblowing. This study fills this gap suggesting that whistleblowing mechanisms for the public sector should allow no room for gender differences and should guarantee equal access to the procedure. A constant-variable-value vignette study conducted with 799 respondents from a large local government in Poland reveals strong gender effects, that overshadow previously supported positive association between public service motivation and corruption reporting. Namely, despite the confirmed positive association between PSM levels and whistleblowing intentions, highly public service motivated women are less inclined to report a misconduct of their supervisors than men. The socialization context relevant to the study location is discussed in the conclusion.

Whistleblowing in the Public Sector: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Decades’ worth of research has highlighted the importance of whistleblowing for building democratic organizations (Brewer & Selden, 1998; Graham, 1986; Pemberton et al, 2012; Prysmakova & Evans, 2020; Taylor, 2018). Scholars view whistleblowing as a pro-social behavior or a form of protest, namely a positive organizational behavior, as whistleblowers wish to behave in a way that promotes public interest (De Maria, 2008).…”

“…In public administration, there has been a flurry of empirical research on whistleblowing, defining it as a prosocial or altruistic behavior, after the initial connection was made by Brewer and Selden (1998) (e.g., Caillier, 2015, 2017; Cho & Song, 2015; Potipiroon & Wongpreedee, 2021; Prysmakova & Evans, 2020). Together with Graham’s notion of principled dissent, which refers to “a protest and/or effort to change the organizational status quo because of a conscientious objection to current policy or practice” (Graham, 1986, p. 1), whistleblowing has received a fair amount of scholarly attention with belief that it would enhance bureaucratic effectiveness, accountability, and ethicality.…”

“…Together with Graham’s notion of principled dissent, which refers to “a protest and/or effort to change the organizational status quo because of a conscientious objection to current policy or practice” (Graham, 1986, p. 1), whistleblowing has received a fair amount of scholarly attention with belief that it would enhance bureaucratic effectiveness, accountability, and ethicality. Recently, the continuing interest in the field has elucidated the bureaucratic whistleblowers’ psychological features using the theory of planned behavior (Lee et al, 2021), the socialization effects of gender on intention to blow the whistle (Prysmakova & Evans, 2020), the trends in State whistleblowing laws (Exmeyer & Jeon, 2020), and the whistleblowing policies in local governments (West & Bowman, 2020). Accordingly, we now have a clear consensus that whistleblowers play a key role in keeping bureaucracies democratic, efficient, and transparent, and thus we need to consider ways to better protect them.…”

A gendered discourse on truthful disclosure of financial fraud practices among accountants in China: implications to corporate governance

“…Putting these arguments into our study's context, research has also shown that women have higher moral awareness than men (Gammie and Gammie, 2009) and that women tend to make stricter ethical judgments than men (Nguyen et al, 2007). Yet, some studies, such as Prysmakova and Evans (2020), have failed to find a significant gender effect on ethical behavior. These mixed findings have led scholars such as Liyanarachchi and Adler (2011) to contend that the display of ethical behavior is situation specific.…”

The Curvilinear Effects of Leader Public Service Motivation on Person–Supervisor Fit and Subordinate Emotional Exhaustion: Evidence From Field and Experimental Studies

“…Although this approach has been used successfully in previous research in applied psychology (e.g., Cameron et al., 2016; Clinton & Pollini, 2021; Martínez-Íñigo et al., 2015), there is still a discrepancy between anticipating to feel something and actually experiencing it (Hassan & Wright, 2020). With that said, it is important to note that, in the PA literature, vignette experiments are widely used to predict attitudes and intentions (e.g., Prysmakova & Evans, 2022) and also the likelihood of engaging in behaviors (e.g., Christensen & Wright, 2018). Furthermore, several techniques were employed to enhance realism in the vignettes including the provision of baseline information to the participants.…”