Methodological Issues in Whistle-blowing Intentions Research: Addressing the Social Desirability Bias and Order Effect Bias

AbstractThe issues of social desirability bias and order effect bias are common problems in ethics. Methodologically, these two problems may weaken the study's validity and reliability thus, making the results of the study invalid. Utilizing vignettes in whistle-blowing research may further add to these problems as the case scenario in the vignettes may enhance respondents’ social desirability bias and the sequence of presentation order of vignettes may then present the problem of vignettes’ order effect bias. The paper addresses these two problems by statistically examining the effects of these two types of bias within the study of whistle-blowing intentions

Whistleblowing behaviour: The influence of ethical climates theory

The study investigates the influence of three types of ethical climate dimensions (egoism, benevolence and principle) on three types of wrongdoing in examining individuals’ whistleblowing behaviour. It was found that, depending on types of wrongdoing, principle ethical climate is able to predict whistleblowing intentions.As for contextual predictors, seriousness of wrongdoing is the most consistent predictor for internal whistleblowing intentions.Results of this study are consistent with ethical climate theory and the finding confirms those from previous studies, by suggesting that organisational members have different reactions to different types of wrongdoings.Implications of the findings on Malaysian organisations for research and practice are discussed