An Empirical Study On Internal Whistle-blowing Intention Of Chinese Enterprise Employees Base On The Theory Of Reasoned Action

The frequent exposure of business scandals such as Toshiba,Tesco,and Olympus has prompted employees' whistle-blowing to become one of the focuses of scholars at home and abroad.In fact,members of the organization are a key source of unethical behavior within the organization.Their positive reactions will play an important role.Employees can report misconduct that exists in the organization that harms the company's interests to the organization(internal whistle-blowing),or report to an individual or organization that can stop the behavior(external whistle-blowing).Compared with external whistle-blowing,employees can promptly expose wrongdoing within the company through internal whistle-blowing to prevent damage or expansion.Through literature review,this study finds that individual factors(perceived cost/benefit)and situation factors(organizational ethical atmosphere)are the key factors affecting employees' intention to whistle-blow internally.This study focuses on the psychological decision-making process of internal whistle-blowing after employees discover illegal,illegal or unethical misconduct that harms the company's interests.This study systematically studies the whistle-blowing through literature combing and other methods.This study demonstrates the importance of internal whistle-blowing of employees,and summarizes that economic rationality is an important stage in the whistle-blowing decision-making process.At the same time,this study summarizes the influencing factors of whistle-blowing behavior(individual factor,situation factor and national factor).Secondly,based on the theory of rational action,this study constructs a conceptual model of the internal whistle-blowing intention including individual factors(perceived cost/benefit)and situation factors(organizational ethical atmosphere),using 421 cases in Chinese context.The data is empirically tested on the conceptual model of the factors affecting employees' internal whistle-blowing intention.The study finds that the theoretical framework based on Theory of Rational Action has a good explanation for employees' internal whistle-blowing intention.Individual factors and situation factors have a significant impact on employees' internal whistle-blowing intention.The results from Hierarchical Linear Regression analysis show that:(1)Perceived costs have a negative influence on whistle-blowing attitudes,perceived benefits have a positive influence on whistle-blowing attitudes;(2)organizational ethical atmosphere has a influence on subjective norms,among them,caring ethical atmosphere and regular ethics atmosphere have a positive influence on subjective norms,and the instrumental ethical atmosphere has a negative influence on subjective norms;(3)whistle-blowing attitude has apositive influence on whistle-blowing intention,and has a significant mediating effect between perceived cost/benefit and whistle-blowing intention;(4)Subjective norm has a positive influence on whistle-blowing intention,and has a significant mediating effect between organizational ethic atmosphere and whistle-blowing intention;(5)Subjective norms have a positive influence on whistle-blowing attitudes.This study aims to explain and predict the internal whistle-blowing intention of employees in the Chinese context,and provide evidence and reference for Chinese enterprises to establish an effective internal whistle-blowing mechanism.