Whistle-blowing in the Australian Public Service. The role of employee ethnicity and occupational affiliation
| Pages | 613-629 |
| Date | 03 April 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2017-0203 |
| Published date | 03 April 2018 |
| Author | Peter Fieger,Bridget S. Rice |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Whistle-blowing in the Australian
Public Service
The role of employee ethnicity and
occupational affiliation
Peter Fieger
UNE Business School, University of New England, Armidale, Australia, and
Bridget S. Rice
Department of Management, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –Whistle-blowing has the important role of reducing the prevalence and impact of wrongdoing in
organisations. The purpose of this paper is to utilise a very large survey of Australian Public Service (APS)
workers to replicate the findings of previous studies in relation to whistle-blowing likelihood and to extend
the quantitative findings in relation to whistle-blowing antecedents to include ethnicity or cultural
marginalisation and occupational and professional role and affiliation.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors utilise the 2014 APS Census, a large data set containing
100,000 observations relating to employee engagement, leadership, health, satisfaction and general
impressions of the public service. Logistic regression is employed to obtain estimates and marginal effects in
respect to predictors for whistle-blowing. The authors determine the Bayesian informationcriterion to assess
the impact of ethnicity on the probability of whistle-blowing.
Findings –The findings support the notion that organisational “outsiders”tend to report perceived
wrongdoing less than those who feel assured of their cultural or organisational status. The authors further
find support for the notion that membership of small organisational groupings, primarily measured by
organisational size, also tends to reduce the whistle-blowing likelihood. Opportunities for further research and
potential policy and practical issues are discussed briefly in conclusion.
Originality/value –While confirming the predictors seen in many previous studies, the authors identify
groups who report more or less than expected that have not been reported in previous research. These include
employees from a non-English speaking background and various occupational and professional groups “at
risk”of low reporting.
Keywords Quantitative, Whistle-blowing, Australian Public Service, Employee ethnicity,
Occupational and professional role affiliation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Business and government-related scandals continue to dog the efficient and effective running
of organisations and national economies. The list of exemplars from various jurisdictions is
hackneyed from overuse –Enron in the USA, Glitnir in Iceland and HIH Insurance in
Australia (Tricker and Tricker, 2014). The public sector is not immune from corruption of
course, and the risks to public finances and good government from public sector corruption
make its effective management and mitigation an imperative (Frederickson and Rohr, 2015;
Lavena, 2016).As public servants are drawn increasinglyinto the contested terrain of politics
and away from theirtraditional role of fearless providers of impartialadvice, the potential for
ethical complexities is exacerbated (Grube, 2014).
In virtually all such cases, as the effects of corruption and/or wrongdoing compounded
within the organisation, insiderswith awareness of the issues remainedsilent. Left unchecked,
illegal behaviour within organisations can accumulate and magnify negative outcomes. Personnel Review
Vol. 47 No. 3, 2018
pp. 613-629
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-07-2017-0203
Received 5 July 2017
Revised 11 October 2017
Accepted 22 December 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
Ethical approval: this paper does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of
the authors.
613
Whistle-
blowing in
the APS
As such, encouragingthe reporting of undesirable behaviour,as and when it occurs, is optimal
both in mitigatingthe direct negative outcomes of the behaviour and also in encouraging the
emergence of ethicality generally within the organisation (Bachmann et al., 2015).
A term that has emerged to describe the reporting of organisational corruption or other
wrongdoing is whistle-blowing. The most widely applied definition of a whistle-blower
comes from Near and Miceli (1985, p. 4) who suggested that “whistle-blowers are
organization members (including former members and job applicants) who disclose illegal,
immoral, or illegitimate practices (including omissions) under the control of their employers,
to persons or organizations who may be able to effect action”.
Whistle-blowing has garnered a significant amount of policy, practitioner and academic
attention in recent years. A shared characteristic of these works is that whistle-blowing is
contextually complex and generally highly consequential for all involved. The decision
process leading up to reporting is complex, nuanced and deeply personal for many
whistle-blowers (Dworkin and Baucus, 1998). The manner in which these individuals and
their organisations are affected is also varied and distinct (Andrade, 2015).
The act of formally or informally reporting perceived misconduct is fraught with
difficulty and comprises a complex set of social phenomena. Any employee or other
stakeholder confronted with wrongdoing has the fundamental choice of reporting or not
reporting the issue. The drivers of the reporting and the non-reporting of perceived
wrongdoing are complex. Most potential whistle-blowers work out that, from a simplistic
self-optimising and economically rational point of view, staying silent is generally optimal.
Whistle-blowers often pay a significant personal price for their reporting, even where the
organisation as a whole benefits (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005; Alatrista and
Arrowsmith, 2004). Opprobrium directed at these whistle-blowers may come from both
internal and external sources and thus the negative effects of reporting wrongdoing often
extend from the professional to the personal in context, and from the immediate to the
long-term in terms of time (Richardson and McGlynn, 2010).
Whistle-blowing can be, and often is, a pivotal life event. Understanding this potential
gravity, and seeing it within the context of human and organisational values contexts, is a
key challenge. Blenkinsopp and Edwards (2008, p. 181) noted that the decision to adopt
“quiescent silence”is often a complex and emotional one for observers of wrongdoing.
Silence is contrasted with voice –a state of active dissent and whistle-blowing. This choice
for silence can be driven by “cues for inaction”relating to personal assessments of situations
and their emotional contexts. They noted that these cues may be rational and/or emotional
feedback felt and observed from previous analogous events in the current or other
organisational contexts. Workers may feel and assess, based on their personal assessment
of the current situation and their assessment of prior relevant analogies that silence is the
better of two options available (the other being voice). A second possible emotional path to
silence may emerge as a break in the “sensemaking”(Weick, 2005) chain from task or project
“submersion”, to sensemaking that arouses stakeholders to a disrupted emotional state to
eventual “voice”. At any stage sensemaking may lead to re-submersion or a non-voice state.
This area, of the post whistle-blowing experience of the reporter, both internally and
externally within their work roles, and also in terms of their well-being and other life issues,
is all under-explored in the literature. Much research adopts cross-sectional survey results to
gauge current attitudes to potential though hypothetical reporting likelihood. This is a
shortcoming of the collected literature in the area.
Legal and financial issues
While it might be hoped that regulatory advances and improved internal management of
whistle-blowing would lead to better corporate and/or public sector behaviour and
less whistle-blowing, it seems the opposite is true (Alleyne et al., 2016). Journal articles on
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