Whistleblowing Incentives

Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to illustrate how companies may benefit from whistleblowing and how whistleblowing may be incentivized to more effectively combat corruption. Design/methodology/approach - No clear hypothesis could be formulated based on the literature review. Therefore, an explorative approach was selected for the purpose of this study. Ten selected compliance experts were interviewed, and the results were subjected to summarizing content analysis. Findings - It was found that corruption, particularly bribery, continues to be prevalent in many corporations and that current anti-bribery incentives are rather inefficient. It was also found that whistleblowing incentives have thus far not been investigated in sufficient depth in the literature, despite the fact that they can be immensely useful in combating corruption. Research limitations/implications - Interviews with different experts, at different times, or selecting experts from different locations could have led to diverging results. Practical implications - Incentive systems, particularly whistleblowing incentives, can be designed to prevent corruption in multinational corporations. Originality/value - This study explores a new field and develops innovative theory to gain a deeper understanding of whistleblowing.