The Effects Of Self-Efficacy And Equity Sensitivity On Whistleblowing Behaviour:The Mediating Role Of Willingness To Whistleblowing And The Moderating Role Of Organizational Ethical Climate

Corporate misconduct is one of the important elements of corporate governance.Corporate misconduct has become one of the major challenges affecting companies’ own interests and the market environment.Therefore,timely detection and disclosure of corporate misconduct has become a key part of corporate governance.The discovery and disclosure of corporate misconduct mainly relies on the members of the organization,who through internal whistle blowing or external reporting of misconduct occurring in the process of internal management can help the enterprise to timely identify problems and correct mistakes,avoid further damage to the interests of the enterprise,optimize the competitive market environment,and protect the rights and interests of investors and stakeholders.The rights and interests of investors and stakeholders.The research on the internal reporting behavior of employees has focused on the process of whistleblowing decision making such as multivariate decision model and ethical behavior model.In fact,the motivation of whistleblowing behavior,i.e.,how to generate whistleblowing intention,is also an important element to be explored in comparison with the study of whistleblowing decision process.As an individual perception,the willingness to report is influenced by individual characteristics.This study suggests that individual fairness sensitivity and self-efficacy may be important antecedent variables.Fairness sensitivity measures an individual’s sense of fairness and justice in giving and receiving in an organization,and provides motivational support for corporate employees’ willingness to report when corporate misconduct is detected;while self-efficacy provides the underpinnings for reporting corporate misconduct.Therefore,based on the trait activation theory,this paper builds a theoretical model from the individual characteristics of employees to the willingness to report and then to the reporting behavior in the context of organizational ethics,in an attempt to reveal the formation mechanism of reporting behavior.Using maturity scale as a tool,the research was designed based on two time points,and a total of 301 matching data were collected one month apart for empirical analysis.AMOS17.0/SPSS26 and other related software were used to conduct reliability analysis,validity analysis,descriptive statistics,correlation analysis and regression analysis of the data,and test the theoretical hypothesis.The findings of this paper:(1)Self-efficacy and fairness sensitivity are positively related to whistleblowing behavior.(2)Willingness to report plays a mediating role between self-efficacy,fairness sensitivity,and whistleblowing behavior.(3)Organizational ethical climate moderates the relationship between self-efficacy and willingness to report,and the positive relationship between self-efficacy and willingness to report is stronger when organizational ethical climate is higher;organizational ethical climate further moderates the indirect role of self-efficacy in influencing whistleblowing behavior through willingness to report.(4)Organizational ethical climate moderates the relationship between fairness sensitivity and willingness to report;when organizational ethical climate is high,the positive relationship between fairness sensitivity and willingness to report is stronger;organizational ethical climate further moderates the indirect role of fairness sensitivity in influencing whistleblowing behavior through willingness to report.This paper aims to explain and validate the factors influencing whistleblowing behavior within corporate employees in the Chinese context,explore the mechanisms of self-efficacy and fairness sensitivity on whistleblowing behavior,and enrich the research on the relationship between them;construct a model from the theoretical perspective of trait activation theory,analyze and explore the mechanism of individual factors of whistleblowing behavior-behavior willingness-behavior occurrence,and broaden the research perspective on whistleblowing behavior;introduce The study also introduces organizational ethical climate into the study of the relationship between self-efficacy,fairness sensitivity and whistleblowing behavior,and deepens the exploration of their boundary regulation;at the same time,the study tries to provide a basis and reference for Chinese enterprises to establish an effective internal whistleblowing mechanism by revealing the basic path of whistleblowing behavior.