Why I don’t Blow the Whistle? Perceived Barriers by the University Teachers to Report Wrong Doings

Abstract

Whistle blowing is a term used to report the unethical act of colleagues and wrongdoings within the organization. Bringing attention towards the misconducts and organization’s effective response accordingly improves the productivity and quality of services. However, this generates the potential threats of organizational and interpersonal conflicts for the whistle-blower thus leads often failure in reporting by the personals or employees. This study explores the perceived barriers by the university teachers, which may hinder the process of reporting wrongdoings. Social constructionism qualitative research design is used. At first phase, face-to-face interviews of six faculty members and narrative research design has been used. At second phase, three focused group discussion sessions with total 24 participants, were carried out in three public sector universities of Punjab, purposively selected. Analysis shows that the people hesitate to blow the whistle due to psychological, social, and organizational barriers, like, fear of joblessness, security threats, lack of supportive organizational polices, lack of adequate mechanism for blowing the whistle, the personal waded interest of the personals. However, this procedure can be enhanced by addressing the issue well in time, adequate security measures, ensured job security for the whistle-blowers, and adoption of a well-developed reporting mechanism in the universities.