Presence Of Misbehavior Research Articles

The Hidden Costs of Whistleblower Protection

We conduct a laboratory experiment to analyze cooperative behavior between a manager and an employee in the presence of misbehavior and protected whistleblowing. Before taking part in a trust game with her employee, a manager has the opportunity to embezzle money at the expense of a third party. Her behavior is observed by the unaffected employee who may trigger an investigation by a report. We vary the framework with respect to monetary incentives and anonymity in case of a report and compare misbehavior, reporting and cooperative behavior across treatments. Our results suggest that a whistleblower law could deter wrongdoing, but could also have a detrimental effect on cooperation in organizations when it increases the probability for false whistleblowing.

Positive Group Context, Work Attitudes, and Organizational Misbehavior: The Case of Withholding Job Effort

Considering the organization’s ethical context as a framework to investigate workplace phenomena, this field study of military reserve personnel examines the relationships among perceptions of psychosocial group variables, such as cohesiveness, helping behavior and peer leadership, employee job attitudes, and the likelihood of individuals’ withholding on-the-job effort, a form of organizational misbehavior. Hypotheses were tested with a sample of 290 individuals using structural equation modeling, and support for negative relationships between perceptions of positive group context and withholding effort by individual employees was found. In addition, individual effort-performance expectancy and individual job satisfaction were negatively related to withholding effort. The findings provide evidence that individual perceptions of positive group context play a key role in the presence of misbehavior at work. The results indicate that positive group context might be an important element of ethical climate that should be managed to temper occurrence of such adverse work behavior.