Personality Effects on Two Types of Whistleblowing Decisions

Authors

  • Moritz Fischer Orcid
    Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany
  • Mario Gollwitzer Orcid
    Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany

Abstract

When employees observe an immoral practice under the control of their employer, they face a decision on whether to act against it. If they do want to act, they need to decide how to report their concerns, that is, whether they want to use internal (i.e., to other members of the organization) or external reporting channels (e.g., to the media). In the present contribution, we investigate which personality traits relate to these two types of whistleblowing decisions. In a two-wave scenario study (N = 724), we tested whether HEXACO Honesty-Humility is associated with a decision for whistleblowing (vs. inaction) and whether HEXACO Agreeableness is associated with a decision for internal (vs. external) whistleblowing. Our predictions were not confirmed, and all in all, the six HEXACO dimensions jointly explained only a small amount of variance in these two whistleblowing decisions. There was, however, evidence from exploratory analyses showing that higher levels of Honesty-Humility were positively associated with a decision for internal (vs. external) whistleblowing.