An Empirical Study On Positive Attitude Towords Whistleblowing And Whistleblowing Intentions

In the context of the transition economy, China has achieved a remarkable economic success. But in the complex and volatile market environment, companies are under the increasing pressure to survive. Many enterprises have been diving too deep for chasing money, reducing costs and price war, with social responsibility and business ethics abandoned. This has caused a large number of confidence crisises, such as the milk scandal and the recall of Toyota. In fact, members of an organization are very important sources of finding wrongdoings. Their positive responses will play an important role. Not only important information can be transmitted from the bottom of the organization to the superior managers (internal whistleblowing), but also can be passed to the external influential individuals or organizations (external whistleblowing). As a kind of organizational citizenship behavior, whistleblowing has attracted extensive attentions of Western scholars. And in relative terms, the related systematic research is sadly to seek in Chinese academic community. However, due to the profound influence of traditional Confucian and Taoism, there are significant differences between Chinese and Westerners, as Lin Yutang says, "Compared to Westerners, Chinese seem to be less aggressive, more conservative, usually lack of bravery, and much more patient". As a result, the conclusions from the study samples of Westerners will probably not apply to those of Chinese. So in the current context of transition economy in China, it has a significant value to explore the mechanism of whistleblowing.Based on the perspectives of the theory of reasoned action and social cognition theory, this study explores the main effects of a positive attitude towards whistleblowing on internal whistleblowing intention, external whistleblowing intention, as well as no-action intention, with instrumental ethical climate as a moderator. Reasearch on the main effects is just a good complement to the current finds in Western countries, while the introduction of instrumental ethical climate as a moderator brings us a light of theoretical innovation. Because the previous work always connects ethical climate with wrongdoings, few research discusses the relationship between ethical climate and whistleblowing, which is the outcome variable of wrongdoings.On the basis of logical deductions, this study proposes six hypotheses and uses an empirical analysis in order to verify them. The 30 enterprises involved are located in Jiangsu, Shanghai, Anhui, Shanxi and Shandong, from industries of cement manufacturing, software development, food processing, retailing, aerospace and so on. Totally 581 valid questionnaires were obtained. And this study uses SPSS18.0 for data analysis, including the descriptive statistics analysis of variables, tests of reliability and validity, as well as hierarchical multiple regressions to verify hypotheses proposed.The results confirm that there are positive relationships between a positive attitude towards whistleblowing and internal whistleblowing intention, as welle as external whistleblowing intention, while instrumental ethical climate is a negative moderator of these two positive relationships. On the other hand, a positive attitude towards whistleblowing turns out to have a significant negative correlation with the no-action intention, while the moderating effect of instrumental ethical climate on this relationship has not been supported.The possible reason is that the effect of instrumental ethical climate on no-action intention is much more significant than its moderating effect.