IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/porgrv/v22y2022i4d10.1007_s11115-021-00554-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Organizational Determinants of Whistleblowing. A Study of Italian Municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Pietro Previtali

    (University of Pavia)

  • Paola Cerchiello

    (University of Pavia)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how to develop whistleblowing systems in public administrations, by focussing on the organisational variables that lead to actual reporting being made. The research is based on an empirical analysis of 400 major Italian municipalities and the whistleblowing systems they have implemented as anti-corruption measures. The results show that actual reporting is positively correlated with the presence of specific whistleblowing procedures as well as training and education programs. Anonymous reporting plays a relevant role.

Suggested Citation

  • Pietro Previtali & Paola Cerchiello, 2022. "Organizational Determinants of Whistleblowing. A Study of Italian Municipalities," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 903-918, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:22:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s11115-021-00554-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11115-021-00554-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11115-021-00554-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11115-021-00554-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cooray, Arusha & Dzhumashev, Ratbek & Schneider, Friedrich, 2017. "How Does Corruption Affect Public Debt? An Empirical Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 115-127.
    2. Pietro Previtali & Paola Cerchiello, 2018. "The Prevention of Corruption as an Unavoidable Way to Ensure Healthcare System Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-14, August.
    3. Nadia Smaili & Paulina Arroyo, 2019. "Categorization of Whistleblowers Using the Whistleblowing Triangle," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 95-117, June.
    4. Pietro Previtali & Paola Cerchiello, 2018. "The determinants of whistleblowing in public administrations: an analysis conducted in Italian health organizations, universities, and municipalities," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(11), pages 1683-1701, November.
    5. Hasan Muhammad Baniamin & Ishtiaq Jamil, 2018. "Dynamics of Corruption and Citizens’ Trust in Anti-Corruption Agencies in Three South Asian Countries," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 381-398, September.
    6. Wim Vandekerckhove & David Lewis, 2012. "The Content of Whistleblowing Procedures: A Critical Review of Recent Official Guidelines," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 108(2), pages 253-264, June.
    7. Marcia Miceli & Janet Near & Terry Dworkin, 2009. "A Word to the Wise: How Managers and Policy-Makers can Encourage Employees to Report Wrongdoing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 86(3), pages 379-396, May.
    8. P. Cassematis & R. Wortley, 2013. "Prediction of Whistleblowing or Non-reporting Observation: The Role of Personal and Situational Factors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 615-634, October.
    9. Barbara Culiberg & Katarina Katja Mihelič, 2017. "The Evolution of Whistleblowing Studies: A Critical Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 146(4), pages 787-803, December.
    10. Rashmi Chordiya & Meghna Sabharwal & Jeannine E. Relly & Evan M. Berman, 2020. "Organizational protection for whistleblowers: a cross-national study," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 527-552, April.
    11. Shanthy Rachagan & Kalaithasan Kuppusamy, 2013. "Encouraging Whistle Blowing to Improve Corporate Governance? A Malaysian Initiative," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 115(2), pages 367-382, June.
    12. Harold Hassink & Meinderd Vries & Laury Bollen, 2007. "A Content Analysis of Whistleblowing Policies of Leading European Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 75(1), pages 25-44, September.
    13. Salvatore Capasso & Rajeev K. Goel & James W. Saunoris, 2019. "Is it the gums, teeth or the bite? Effectiveness of dimensions of enforcement in curbing corruption," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 329-369, December.
    14. Sheilendra Peerthum & Takesh Luckho, 2021. "Exploring the Linkage Between Public Corruption and Political Trust in Mauritius: a PLS-SEM Approach," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 317-335, June.
    15. Rahel M. Schomaker, 2020. "Conceptualizing Corruption in Public Private Partnerships," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 807-820, December.
    16. Jin Cheng & Haiqing Bai & Xijuan Yang, 2019. "Ethical Leadership and Internal Whistleblowing: A Mediated Moderation Model," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 115-130, March.
    17. Kenneth S. Chan & Vinh Q.T. Dang & Tingting Li, 2020. "Corruption and Income Inequality in China," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(14), pages 3351-3366, November.
    18. Wim Vandekerckhove & Arron Phillips, 2019. "Whistleblowing as a Protracted Process: A Study of UK Whistleblower Journeys," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 201-219, September.
    19. James Gerard Caillier & Yongjin Sa, 2017. "Do transformational-oriented leadership and transactional-oriented leadership have an impact on whistle-blowing attitudes? A longitudinal examination conducted in US federal agencies," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 406-422, April.
    20. Wim Vandekerckhove, 2018. "Whistleblowing and Information Ethics: Facilitation, Entropy, and Ecopoiesis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 15-25, September.
    21. Michele Tantardini & Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor, 2015. "Organizational Social Capital and Anticorruption Policies: An Exploratory Analysis," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 599-609, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zul Muhammad Zairi & Abdullah Muhammad Syukri & Awang Tuah Siti Normah & Zainudin Zatil Aqmar & Aziz Anidah, 2023. "Understanding Whistleblowing Intention Among Public Sector Employees in the Northern Region of Malaysia: Does Gender Matter?," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 15(4), pages 516-528.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Muel Kaptein, 2022. "How Much You See Is How You Respond: The Curvilinear Relationship Between the Frequency of Observed Unethical Behavior and The Whistleblowing Intention," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(4), pages 857-875, February.
    2. Hengky Latan & Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour & Murad Ali & Ana Beatriz Lopes de Sousa Jabbour & Tan Vo-Thanh, 2023. "What Makes You a Whistleblower? A Multi-Country Field Study on the Determinants of the Intention to Report Wrongdoing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 885-905, March.
    3. Federico Ceschel & Alessandro Hinna & Fabian Homberg, 2022. "Public Sector Strategies in Curbing Corruption: A Review of the Literature," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 571-591, September.
    4. Hengky Latan & Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour & Ana Beatriz Lopes de Sousa Jabbour, 2021. "To Blow or Not to Blow the Whistle: The Role of Rationalization in the Perceived Seriousness of Threats and Wrongdoing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 517-535, March.
    5. Barbara Culiberg & Katarina Katja Mihelič, 2017. "The Evolution of Whistleblowing Studies: A Critical Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 146(4), pages 787-803, December.
    6. Dina El-Bassiouny & Amr Kotb & Hany Elbardan & Noha El-Bassiouny, 2023. "To Blow or Not to Blow the Whistle? An Islamic Framework," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(2), pages 385-404, October.
    7. Hanen Khemakhem & Richard Fontaine & Nadia Smaili & Mahbub Zaman, 2023. "Whistleblowing regulations and the role of audit committees: insight from interviews," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 27(1), pages 131-151, March.
    8. Kate Kenny & Marianna Fotaki, 2023. "The Costs and Labour of Whistleblowing: Bodily Vulnerability and Post-disclosure Survival," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 182(2), pages 341-364, January.
    9. Assad Tavakoli & Tanya Gibbs & Meysam Manesh, 2024. "The interplay of ethical decision making and legal frameworks for whistleblowing: the UAE example," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(3), pages 447-461, September.
    10. Verschuuren, Pim, 2020. "Whistleblowing determinants and the effectiveness of reporting channels in the international sports sector," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 142-154.
    11. Lee, Gladys & Xiao, Xinning, 2018. "Whistleblowing on accounting-related misconduct: A synthesis of the literature," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 22-46.
    12. Jing Zhou & Shibin Sheng & Chuang Zhang, 2022. "Deterring Unethical Behaviors in Marketing Channels: The Role of Distributor Whistleblowing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 97-115, November.
    13. Jason MacGregor & Martin Stuebs, 2014. "The Silent Samaritan Syndrome: Why the Whistle Remains Unblown," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 120(2), pages 149-164, March.
    14. Clark, Daniel R., 2023. "Embracing whistleblowing for enhanced firm self-regulation," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 66(6), pages 817-833.
    15. Emilie Hennequin, 2023. "Whistleblowing as a Career Crisis: Recovering from Retaliatory Job Loss through a Process of Bifurcation," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(2), pages 545-562, April.
    16. Ignatowski Grzegorz, 2023. "Problems with the Concept of Whistleblowing in the Intercultural Perspective and the EU Directive 2019/1937," Journal of Intercultural Management, Sciendo, vol. 15(2), pages 78-103, June.
    17. Kaptein, S.P., 2009. "From Inaction to External Whistleblowing: The Influence of the Ethical Culture of Organizations on Employee Responses to Observed Wrongdoing," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2009-047-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    18. Sheng-min Liu & Jian-qiao Liao & Hongguo Wei, 2015. "Authentic Leadership and Whistleblowing: Mediating Roles of Psychological Safety and Personal Identification," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 107-119, September.
    19. Gladys Lee & Neil Fargher, 2013. "Companies’ Use of Whistle-Blowing to Detect Fraud: An Examination of Corporate Whistle-Blowing Policies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 283-295, May.
    20. Wim Vandekerckhove, 2022. "Is It Freedom? The Coming About of the EU Directive on Whistleblower Protection," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 1-11, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:22:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s11115-021-00554-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.