7. Support for whistleblowing among managers: exploring job satisfaction and awareness of obligations

In the remaining chapters of this book, attention turns from whistleblowers and their treatment to the organisational cultures and systems within which whistleblowing occurs and the different elements of how individual organisations currently respond. In understanding organisational responses and some of the possible explanations for the results in Part 1, no issues are more important than those of the roles, knowledge, awareness and attitude of managers.

Among the contradictions in current research on whistleblowing is the dual role that managers often play. On one hand, managers can foster unhealthy work environments that lead to employee complaints, low staff morale and high employee turnover. In an environment in which abusive supervision practices are prevalent, reports of wrongdoing can be expected, especially among employees with moderate levels of organisational commitment (Somers and Casal 1994). In contrast, some managers, for a range of reasons, foster productive and professional work environments that engender more positive experiences among employees. In this context, managers can be expected not only to promote and foster a positive reporting climate, but demonstrate the commitment and capacity to provide more professional and effective responses to whistleblowing. The confidence that effective managers provide to their staff could therefore promote greater employee communication intended to resolve concerns informally or strong assurances that effective responses will be available in the event that formal reports are made.

This duality of roles is well demonstrated in some of the previous chapters. For example, in Chapter 4, we saw that most employees who were prepared to come forward with concerns about wrongdoing were inclined to trust their managers with that information. This predisposition to trust managers is clearly in the organisation’s interests. In Chapter 5, however, which focused on outcomes largely from the perspectives of whistleblowers, we saw that managers were likely to be regarded as the source of most bad treatment or harm that whistleblowers experienced. In some cases, the perception that management has failed or deliberately mistreated the whistleblower is unavoidable. Chapter 6 reinforces that especially when managers are implicated in the allegation of wrongdoing, the risks of reported whistleblower mistreatment can become very high.

From all of this evidence, there are good reasons to expect that the competence, attitudes and qualities of managers make a material difference in their commitment to the practice of whistleblowing, as well as their support for procedures for handling it. In short, the role of managers within organisational settings is crucial in relation to whether whistleblowing occurs, whether whistleblowing reporting procedures and attitudes to reporting wrongdoing are endorsed or promoted and whether such incidents are managed in a professional and competent manner (Masser and Brown 1996; Vandekerckhove 2006).^[2] While it is often acknowledged that the role of management is crucial in the handling and support of whistleblowing, important questions remain regarding the interaction between organisational experiences and workplace attitudes in determining a manager’s level of support for whistleblowing. There has been a limited set of studies linking various organisational characteristics such as workplace culture to whistleblowing (cf. Zhuang et al. 2005), but much of this research has not focused especially on the role of managers. The relationship, therefore, between the workplace attitudes of managers and their attitudes towards whistleblowing is poorly understood.

In this chapter, we examine the relationships between organisational and personal factors and levels of managerial support for whistleblowing. More specifically, we examine whether managers with positive attitudes towards their organisation—as indicated by their job satisfaction, trust in management and organisational citizenship—disproportionately support whistleblowing when compared with other managers and non-managers. The results show job satisfaction to be a salient facilitating factor in managers’ support for whistleblowing ‘in principle’, as well as their reported knowledge of reporting procedures. The findings therefore illustrate how experiences at work, in terms of whether one is satisfied or not, can lead to various tangible benefits across organisations.

We then explore the extent to which managers appear conscious of their specific obligations in respect of the management of whistleblowers, as a continuation of the broader inquiry into how effectively these positive outlooks translate into practice.^[3] These results show that managers are far less certain about rights and obligations relevant to their own role in respect of real whistleblowing incidents. There are also strong signs that managers themselves recognise the need to close the gaps between broad principle and practical realities. While it is clear that managers have a unique role to play in encouraging whistleblowing, the results suggest that a concerted effort is needed if the potential contribution of good management cultures and styles to the productive management of whistleblowing is to be maximised. The major question becomes, how can agency systems and procedures build on the general support for whistleblowing that has been found among individual managers? By investing in the job satisfaction of managers as well as by promoting greater awareness among managers of their whistleblowing reporting obligations and procedures, organisations can do a great deal to reduce the risks of some of the outcomes described in earlier chapters and increase the prospects of the whistleblowing process being handled well.