Investigating the Antecedents of Whistleblowing

Abstract

Prevalence of corporate frauds is critical, therefore, it is very important to detect and institutionalize the black sheep’s in the organization which are involved in misconduct and must be brought to the light via whistleblowing. Ethical leadership equitably influence ethical climate, which in turn will favorably encourages employees in whistleblowing. This study is intended to examine and overcome the research gap based on the mediating aspect of psychological stress and moral attentiveness in association of ethical leadership, ethics oriented climate on whistleblowing. Twelve hypotheses were developed to examine the conceptual framework of the study. A self-administered questionnaire was devised to acquire cross sectional information from 425 employees from the banks in Gujranwala division, Punjab, Pakistan via convenient sampling. Results showed that in the presence of ethical leadership and ethics oriented environment in an organization’ the psychological stress of employees decreases and moral attentiveness of the employees increases and ultimately have the positive impact on whistleblowing. Hence, this research is one of the few cross-sectional researches that examining the mediation mechanism of psychological stress and moral attentiveness in the banking sector of Pakistan.