Determinants of the willingness to report unethical behavior

Despite efforts to reduce unethical behavior in government, public sector employees often remain reluctant to report misconduct. This study applies social information processing theory and an experimental design to examine how ethical leadership, individual judgments of coworkers’ behavior, organizational climate types, and enforcement of a code of conduct influence employees’ willingness to report misconduct. We tested the hypotheses with 710 employees in Australia’s commonwealth and state public sectors in two experiments. Findings show ethical leadership’s effect on reporting strengthens when employees’ ethical judgments of colleagues’ behavior are low. High ethical leadership and high enforcement of a code of conduct partially increase employees’ willingness to report in a principled climate. Ethical leadership significantly enhances employees’ willingness to report in a climate of benevolence, irrespective of code of conduct enforcement. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.