Abstract
The increase in whistleblowing to a regulator or media has sparked organizational efforts to keep whistleblowing internal to minimize the risk of exposure across various sectors and geographical contexts. However, it is less clear how organizations can make their internal whistleblowing system trustworthy for their internal stakeholders. Research on trust in organizations rarely considers how trustworthiness is signalled in complex organizational situations. In internal whistleblowing channels and procedures, we demonstrate that signalling trustworthiness involves multiple attributions of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, integrity, transparency, identification) as well as multiple internal stakeholders (workers, middle managers and top management). This makes whistleblowing an ideal case in point for investigating interactions between trustworthiness attributions across stakeholders and how these change across time. This article examines a specific critical issue: how operators of whistleblowing channels attempt to signal trustworthiness through a sequence of interactions with multiple trustors. Our research comprises interviews with 30 operators of internal whistleblowing channels and consultants from four organizations from different sectors (engineering, banking, health care and public administration). Our findings allow us to theorize temporality in signalling trustworthiness of new organizational practices. We suggest that a fundamental ambiguity and contradiction underlies the trustworthiness of internal whistleblowing channels. Within the limited organizational mandate of those who operate whistleblowing channels, this ambiguity is experienced as synchronic and diachronic tensions, requiring specific approaches on the part of actors involved.
Introduction
Trust in institutions and organizations is an essential precondition for their functioning (O’Neill, 2018). This is increasingly important in contexts of rapid technological and geopolitical changes and the evidence of widespread systemic wrongdoing in business. But how can trustworthiness be fostered and garnered by individuals who implement policies and structures promoting ethical behaviour in organizations? The significance of whistleblowing in today’s organizational context, characterized by uncertainty and declining trust in institutions, is ever more critical (Vandekerckhove, 2016). Organizations may wish to foster whistleblowing because they want to avoid reputational damage if they engage in unethical practices, because they have a legal obligation to comply with the law, or because they want a genuine change for the better.
Governments increasingly promote whistleblowing arrangements as broader moves toward greater accountability for wrongdoing and strengthening governance, yet such initiatives often backfire due to a lack of effectiveness (Blenkinsopp et al., 2019; Powell, 2020). Whistleblowing is ‘the disclosure by organization members (former or current) of illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices under the control of their employers, to persons or organizations that may be able to affect action’ (Near & Miceli, 1985, p. 4). Whistleblowing is often seen as a highly effective means for detecting fraud and serious economic crimes (ACFE, 2022). There is now increased attention on safe and effective internal whistleblowing in both research (Kaptein, 2011; Loyens & Maesschalck, 2014; Smaili, Vandekerckhove, & Arroyo Pardo, 2023; Weber & Wasielski, 2013) and professional practice (e.g. industry benchmarks such as the ISO37002 standard published in 2021 or the ICC guidelines from 2022). Media focus on external whistleblowing to a regulator or to journalists has increased organizational efforts to keep whistleblowing internal, both to minimize the costs and the risk of reputational damage of being the target of an investigation (Bowen, Call, & Raigopal, 2010) as well as to realize the constructive potential for organizations (Dasgupta & Kersharwani, 2010). Operating internal whistleblowing channels has become a regulatory requirement for many organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia. Research further suggests that most whistleblowing remains internal to the organization and that nearly all external whistleblowing has internal precedents (Kenny, Fotaki, & Vandekerckhove, 2020; Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019).
This article suggests that the context of whistleblowing channels and the individuals’ roles in ensuring trustworthiness of these channels is ideal for examining our theoretical question about trustworthiness. Individuals at the heart of operating such channels are vital for whether and how organizational members will use these channels. Those responsible for internal speaking-up procedures aimed at raising and resolving concerns internally, have to signal trustworthiness to embed them in organizations. Doing so requires recognizing the contextual, precarious and dynamically changing nature of trust (Barbalet, 2009). Therefore, whistleblowing represents an ideal case in point for examining trustworthiness in a complex setting because such dilemmas are at the heart of trust literature concerned with intra-organizational trust building (Becerra & Gupta, 2003; Dietz & Den Hartog, 2006; Pirson & Malhotra, 2011; Six, 2007). As we see it, the complexity of making whistleblowing channels trustworthy is that (1) different internal stakeholders have to find them trustworthy, and (2) trust needs to be maintained throughout the handling process (i.e. reception of a whistleblower report, follow-up of the report, and closing of the case), bringing up its various temporal tensions.
However, scholarship to date has afforded little attention to those with specific mandates to operate or oversee internal whistleblowing channels, and their central role in making them trustworthy over time. Extant research on whistleblowing and trust tends to overlook these organizational agents. For example, Seifert, Stammerjohan and Martin (2014) and Akhtar, Javed, Syed, Aslam and Hussain (2021) find that organizational trust and supervisor trust influence workers’ intention to blow the whistle internally but do not consider characteristics of the whistleblowing channel or specialist personnel. Similarly, Brown, Vandekerckhove and Dreyfus (2014) suggest that people support whistleblower protection initiatives when they trust that whistleblower reports will be taken seriously and that wrongdoings will be corrected, yet they overlook the role of staff operating internal whistleblowing channels. Taylor (2018) finds that the trustworthiness of senior managers influences internal whistleblowing behaviour more than the trustworthiness of co-workers or supervisors but does not consider specialist personnel as a distinct group or level within the organization.
The more recent whistleblowing scholarship suggests that the lack of interest in the issues concerning how individuals signal trustworthiness to different stakeholders over time is a serious oversight limiting our understanding of trustworthiness and whistleblowing. There is a close relationship between institutional arrangements as an object of trust and the individuals operating them in complex situations involving various aspects of trustworthiness (Bachmann, 2022). The emerging whistleblowing research suggests that implementing and operating internal whistleblowing channels can create ambiguity (Du Plessis, 2022) and conflicting sets of expectations (Smaili et al., 2023). If whistleblowing is best understood as a protracted process rather than a one-off decision on whether and how to blow the whistle (Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019), signalling the trustworthiness of internal speaking arrangements is also a process, involving temporal considerations (Kenny, Fotaki & Vandekerckhove, 2020). This article seeks to further that emerging scholarship. We focus on those individuals with specific mandates to operate or oversee internal whistleblowing channels. In the remainder of this article, we will call these internal whistleblowing recipients (IWRs); by ‘internal whistleblowing channels (IWCs)’ we mean the reporting interface (e.g. hotline, web-based or mobile app) as well as the whole process of handling the whistleblower report. In our context this is to do with how individual IWRs use and apply the available IWCs to make the whole process of addressing whistleblowers’ concerns trustworthy.
IWRs’ roles include providing training, promoting the channel, doing triage of reports, investigating, arranging protection measures, recommending further action, giving feedback to whistleblowers, generating organizational learning, as well as coordinating all these tasks. While some of these tasks can be outsourced to service providers, they should still be considered part of the IWCs (cf. ISO37002 and Kenny, Vandekerckhove & Fotaki, 2019), both legally speaking as well as in a practical sense. 1 This article examines a specific critical issue: how operators of whistleblowing channels (IWRs) attempt to signal trustworthiness of the whistleblowing channel through a sequence of interactions with multiple trustors (e.g. employees, middle managers, top management and the board). The novelty of our research thus lies in providing insight into how organizational actors signal the trustworthiness of an organizational process synchronically (to multiple trustors) and diachronically (throughout a sequence of interactions).
We use interview data with IWRs from different organizations as well as individuals to whom organizations outsource whistleblowing channel-related tasks to explore how they attempt to make internal whistleblowing channels trustworthy for their stakeholders. As internal whistleblowing is institutionalized through dedicated policies and technologies (hotline, web-based and mobile apps), we find that these institutional arrangements are sites of uncertainty for those who operate and seek to instil trust in these institutional whistleblowing arrangements. This uncertainty occurs against the background of the overall progressive decline of trust in institutions (Citrin & Stoker, 2018) and, more specifically, the absence of clarity on the accountability structures faced by individuals tasked with operating whistleblowing channels.
However, IWRs also perceive contradictory expectations from various internal stakeholders and tensions in meeting expectations across time. Facing conflicting objectives vis-a-vis various stakeholders, they often signal trustworthiness in contradicting and self-defeating ways, thereby creating expectations that cannot be met. These are significant findings for whistleblowing scholarship and organizational trust research.
Our article contributes to the whistleblowing and trust literatures in the following ways. First, our research enhances our understanding of how individuals operating internal whistleblowing channels signal trustworthiness in complex organizational settings involving different stakeholders. Specifically, we provide insight into how different dimensions of trustworthiness (i.e. ability, benevolence, integrity and transparency) interact and what makes IWCs trustworthy for them. Extant research has focused on how internal stakeholders differ from external stakeholders regarding the attributes of trustworthiness they seek (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011). Our research furthers this literature by showing that to make the IWCs trustworthy, IWRs also differentiate among internal stakeholders when signalling trustworthiness. While research on trustworthiness signalling seems to assume that there is a single, universally accepted ‘truth’ underlying the signal, where distortion might occur but can be overcome by the correct practice (Connelly, Certo, Ireland & Reutzel, 2011), we show that there can be a fundamental ambiguity and contradiction underlying the ‘reality’ of the situation being signalled. We suggest that communicating this ambiguity can be the only way forward for those whose role it is to signal the trustworthiness of new organizational practices and technologies to different stakeholders.
Second, our research uncovers a crucial temporal dimension underlying signalling trustworthiness in the whistleblowing context. We examine attempts to establish trustworthiness at different stages of the whistleblowing process: eliciting reports, investigating, taking corrective action, closing cases. Our research suggests that signalling trustworthiness comprises synchronous (to different stakeholders simultaneously) and diachronic (to the same stakeholders at different times) tensions, requiring different approaches to resolve.
A third contribution of our research also relates to time but is to the whistleblowing literature. In a recent study explicitly devoted to temporality in whistleblowing, Brooks, Richmond and Blenkinsopp (2023) narrate the whistleblowing literature according to the temporal dimensions of the decision to voice and the responses to voice but pay little attention to temporal dimensions of the voice medium. Our research complements this work by showing how those who ‘carry’ a formal voice mechanism (i.e. IWRs as persons and IWCs as institutions) struggle to instil such an accepting attitude with all organizational stakeholders because of power differentials between them and the organizations’ top management. Our contribution is to bring attention to the ambiguity and acceptance of indeterminacy in signalling trustworthiness, related to the limited organizational mandate of those who operate whistleblowing channels.
The article begins by integrating literature on trustworthiness, signalling theory and whistleblowing to frame our research. Next, we provide information about our sampling and abductive approach to data analysis. We go on to present our findings concerning synchronic and diachronic tensions in signalling trustworthiness. The section after that discusses the theoretical contributions and recommendations for practice. We conclude with some suggestions for further research.
Literature Review
Internal whistleblowing and trust
Whistleblowers detect serious economic crimes more successfully than other audit methods (ACFE, 2022). There is also evidence that whistleblowing best serves organizations when fraud is reported internally (Miceli, Near, Rehg & Van Scotter, 2012). This can stop or correct wrongdoing in organizations as early as possible, which is in the interest of organizations and society (Miceli & Near, 2009; Near & Miceli, 2016). Temporality has emerged as a critical dimension in whistleblowing scholarship in recent years. Whether internal, external, or both, whistleblowing comprises a protracted process including multiple stages spread over long periods rather than a single moment of decision making (Brown, 2008; Kenny, 2015; Kenny, Fotaki & Vandekerckhove, 2020; Rothschild & Miethe, 1999; Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019). Furthermore, internal whistleblowing almost always precedes going externally to a regulator or journalist (Brown, 2008; Miceli, Near & Dworkin, 2008).
A decisive factor for internal whistleblowers to escalate their whistleblowing to external recipients such as regulators or the media appears to be the actual or anticipated responses which whistleblowers receive when they raise their concerns informally with their line manager (Rothschild & Miethe, 1999). Potential whistleblowers watch out for signs that the organization is taking previous organizational members’ attempts to speak up seriously (Kenny et al., 2019). People’s early experiences of speaking up influence how whistleblowing tends to unfold, including if and when it escalates (Fotaki & Kenny, 2015; Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019). Therefore, recursive feedback loops play a crucial role at different stages and throughout the process since the expected response by management to a potential whistleblowing action influences decisions to disclose (Kenny, Vandekerckhove, & Irfan, 2020).
The whistleblowing literature has hardly paid any attention to those who operate internal whistleblowing procedures. Researchers such as Fanchini (2019) examined what persuades external recipients like journalists or law enforcement officers to recognize someone as a whistleblower, while Smaili et al. (2023) use principal–agent theory to describe how compliance officers can be caught in-between conflicting expectations of the whistleblower and of top management. Handling whistleblowing reports comprises various tasks, including triaging disclosures, conducting training, initiating investigations, addressing wrongdoing, recommending sanctions to wrongdoers, reviewing cases and suggesting protection measures (Kenny et al., 2019). This sequence is known as the whistleblowing process.
Retaining a potential whistleblower’s trust in organizational internal whistleblowing channels throughout this process often proves difficult. Because of legal limitations on what can be communicated, some decisions in the handling process are withheld from whistleblowers or substantially delayed, which can affect the trustworthiness of organizational processes. Organizations may also compete with regulators for the whistleblower’s information, with trustworthiness being an essential currency in this struggle. For instance, the recent change introduced via the US SEC reward programs compensating whistleblowers for harm due to disclosures (Butler, Serra & Spagnolo, 2020; Nyreröd & Spagnolo, 2021) could incentivize whistleblowing externally. To prevent the whistleblower from turning away from the organization, the organization needs to gain their trust and effectively guard that trust throughout the process. This constitutes the temporal tension involved in trustworthiness.
Furthermore, the emerging whistleblowing research indicates that there are members within the organization who have to broker internal whistleblowing channels and balance them across internal stakeholders. For instance, Du Plessis (2022) uses a Foucauldian lens to analyse internal whistleblowing channels as a management technique. He finds at least three ‘distinct dispositional potentials’ (dispositives) concurrently at play, namely a discipline-and-control dispositive, a security dispositive and a dialogue dispositive. Du Plessis (2022) argues that this interplay of dispositives causes ambiguity, even within stakeholder groups such as unions, accountants, production workers and managers. Compliance officers, as operators of internal whistleblowing channels, face two opposite sets of demands and success criteria (Smaili et al., 2023), as both whistleblowers and board members delegate responsibility to the compliance officer for handling the whistleblower report. However, for the whistleblower, handling the disclosure well implies pulling out all the stops and doing whatever it takes to stop the wrongdoing while, for the board, it means resolving the matter swiftly with little to no disruptions.
Adequate organizational whistleblowing channels in public institutions and private companies are needed to encourage employees to speak up through channels that allow organizations to respond to those concerns. There is an acknowledgement in the literature that successful internal whistleblowing not only protects whistleblowers from retaliation but also enhances capacity to deal with wrongdoing (e.g. Brown et al., 2014; Vandekerckhove, Brown & Tsahuridu, 2014). Workers believing that their whistleblowing will be effective in stopping wrongdoing are more likely to raise a concern (Culiberg & Mihelič, 2016; Hennequin, 2020). Here, IWRs play a key role because they coordinate the whistleblowing process. The European Whistleblowing Directive (EU Dir 2019/1937, Art 9.1c) obliges organizations of 50 or more workers to have such a designated role. The role is often combined with the function of compliance officer, ethics officer, human resources manager, or with a specific technical expertise such as a medical director. Since whistleblowing is a ‘disclosure [. . .] to persons or organizations that may be able to effect action’ (Near & Miceli, 1985, p. 4), this implies that the discloser cannot address the wrongdoing him- or herself and is trusting that the recipient does. In other words, the whistleblower expects the IWR to stop the wrongdoing.
This is by no means straightforward. Trust always involves ‘emotionally enabled leaps of faith’ (Möllering, 2013, p. 291), yet it is critical in whistleblowing situations. The IWR coordinates the handling of the whistleblowing report, about which various internal stakeholders can have differing expectations. Anechiarico and Jacobs (1996) point out that investigations can easily paralyse departments for long periods. Hence, managers will expect investigations to be carried out in a non-intrusive way, e.g. without suspending key staff involved or suspending disciplinary decisions of a manager towards a worker raising concern which makes them anxious (Feldman & Eichental, 2014, p. 41). Whistleblowers will expect the IWR to keep their identity confidential while taking swift action. Alleged wrongdoers will also expect the investigators to hear and believe their side of the story. Thus, the trustworthiness of the internal whistleblowing channel is not simply a matter of dyadic trust between the IWR and the whistleblower. Instead, whistleblowing can involve multiple actors (including the whistleblower, the alleged wrongdoer(s), the whistleblower’s line manager and top management) and levels (including individual and organizational). Establishing trust in the internal whistleblowing channels means that IWRs need to convince each stakeholder of its trustworthiness by effectively balancing their anticipations and handling projections from previous experiences. This synchronic tension compounds the temporal one discussed above, adding another layer of complexity to IWR’s job of signalling trustworthiness, to which we turn next.
Signalling trustworthiness
Hardin (2002, p. 34) wrote: ‘Making oneself trustworthy is convincing the trustor of one’s commitment to fulfil the trustor’s trust.’ How do operators of whistleblowing channels (IWRs) do this, and what difficulties do they face? Our research findings shed light on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness through a sequence of interactions with multiple trustors. We provide a brief overview of signalling and trustworthiness to situate our research within these literatures. Specifically, we focus on signalling theory, which was particularly useful in understanding and articulating the difficulties and uncertainties IWRs experience in making internal whistleblowing channels trustworthy.
Individual trust is about a person’s (trustee’s) degree of willingness to be vulnerable (Colquitt & Rodell, 2011) based on positive expectation concerning other individuals, organizations or institutions. Thus, you can lack trust in your manager but have trust in the organization, or vice versa. To explain this, Hardin (2002) notes that attention should be paid to an antecedent of trust, namely trustworthiness. Simply put, you trust me if you attribute trustworthiness to me (Boersma, Buckley & Ghauri, 2003; Carter, 2022). It is in that sense that trustworthiness is a property that one can attempt to gain by signalling their trustworthiness to others. In other words, trustworthiness is not an inherent quality of an individual to be signalled to others but an attribute they retrospectively gain through effective signalling of trustworthiness. This makes signalling a necessary condition of becoming trustworthy and therefore crucial to study and theorize to advance our understanding of trust. We studied IWRs as the individuals who try to make an organizational process trustworthy (i.e. the internal whistleblowing channel). Bacharach and Gambetta (2001) argue in a series of rational choice hypothetical experiments that trust is not a result of repeated interactions per se but rather ‘the product of underlying trustworthy-making character features’ (p. 150). In that sense, IWRs need to be able to go from sending signals of trustworthiness to sending trustworthy signals.
We recognize that signalling may not be sufficient to elicit trust and make no claims about how successful the IWRs’ attempts to signal trustworthiness are in actually getting others to trust the internal whistleblowing channel. The individual signalling trust may not succeed in getting others to attribute trustworthiness to themselves or to the channels. Understanding the reasons for that failure is as valuable as understanding the reasons for success. The central question guiding our research is, how do IWRs signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels and what challenges do they face in doing so? Our unit of analysis is the IWR, and our study focuses on how they attempt to signal the trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels vis-a-vis other stakeholders within the organization. Emerging from our abductive analysis, the article draws on the pioneering research of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) and its further development by Pirson and Malhotra (2011) to theorize how the IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels to potential trustors.
Mayer et al. (1995) distinguish three key dimensions of trustworthiness in their ABI-model (ability, benevolence and integrity): (1) attribution of ability: the trustor believes the trustee has the required competence to do what the trustor trusts them to do; (2) attribution of benevolence: the trustor believes the trustee has good intentions, i.e. will not take advantage and will be concerned with the trustor’s well-being; (3) attribution of integrity: the trustor believes that the trustee acts according to a set of principles that the trustor finds acceptable. To these three, Pirson and Malhotra (2011) added two further dimensions: (4) attribution of transparency: the trustor believes that the trustee is willing to share trust-relevant information with the trustor; and (5) attribution of identification: the trustor believes that they hold shared values and commitments with the trustee and understands the interests and intentions of the trustee. While both integrity and identification entail that the trustor believes the trustee acts according to a set of principles, identification differs from integrity in that it further entails that the trustor also believes that the trustor and trustee share the internalized values underlying these principles. We have found Pirson and Malhotra’s (2011) expansion of Mayer et al.’s (1995) ABI model helpful in analysing our data. Their work further shows that internal and external stakeholders differ in which attributions of trustworthiness matter most. They find that internal stakeholders seek managerial competence, identification and integrity as trustworthiness attributes in trustee organizations. In contrast, external stakeholders seek technical instead of managerial competence. They also demonstrate that stakeholders who interact frequently with the organization, i.e. customers (external) and employees (internal), value benevolence as a trustworthiness attribute, whereas low-frequency stakeholders, i.e. suppliers (external) and investors (internal), value transparency. However, we know little about situations where a single trustee has to convince multiple trustors of their trustworthiness, and how these attributes might interact over time. Our research addresses these questions by linking signalling trustworthiness to temporality.
Signalling theory finds its origins in the work of Spence (1973) on how job candidates use education to signal their quality to recruiters in an attempt to reduce information asymmetries. Today, there is a vast literature that uses signalling theory, also within management and organization studies, encompassing different levels of analysis. Strategy scholars often explore firm-level signallers of quality through retaining debt (Ross, 1977), issuing dividends (Bhattacharya, 1979), or highlighting a CEO’s background and financial statements (Zhang & Wiersema, 2009). The marketing literature has examined product signals (e.g. Gammoh, Voss & Chakraborty, 2006). Individual signallers have been studied in HR, OB and entrepreneurship studies (e.g. Chandler, Waddingham & Wolfe, 2024; Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005; Ramaswami, Dreher, Bretz & Wiethoff, 2010). Previous scholarship has also integrated signalling concepts with other theories. For example, Miller and Triana (2009) combine signalling theory with behavioural theory of the firm to understand how directors signal diversity to organizational stakeholders. Ryan, Sacco, McFarland and Kriska (2000) integrate signalling with image and expectancy theory to examine what signals police departments send out to police applicants in the hiring process. To our knowledge, signalling theory has not yet been used in the context of whistleblowing. In our study, we combine signalling theory with trustworthiness scholarship to provide insight on how IWRs attempt to convey to stakeholders within the organization that the whistleblowing channels are trustworthy, and what challenges IWRs face in doing so.
Signalling theory ‘focuses mainly on actions insiders take to intentionally communicate positive, imperceptible qualities of the insider’ (Connelly et al., 2011, p.45). Signals are information cues that are observable and are intended to communicate the presence of an unobservable quality. In our research on how IWRs signal trustworthiness, we look at the information cues IWRs send to convince others that the whistleblowing channel and the handling process are competent, benevolent, transparent and have integrity. We also follow Hardin’s (2002) constitutive dimensions of trustworthiness as a dispositional quality, which help examine various ways a trustee signals trustworthiness.
With regard to temporality, previous trust research (Fotaki, 2014; Möllering, 2013; Nooteboom, 1996; Pirson & Malhotra, 2011; Seifert, Sweeney, Joireman & Thornton, 2010) assumes that repeated signalling of trustworthiness happens in sequences of identical interactions. Early trust research tended to approach temporality linearly (Nooteboom, 1996). For example, Nooteboom’s (1996) initial work on trust asserted that previous interactions are vital information on which subsequent trust attributions depend. Seifert et al. (2010) find that the frequency of interaction positively impacts trustworthiness. Yet, more recent trust research has started to emphasize non-linearity. For Möllering (2013), trust is processual and continuously (re)produced, while positive trust experiences enhance the trustor’s well-being. Fotaki, Kenny and Scriver (2015) show that successive failing trusting experiences adversely impact the mental health of whistleblowers. In our research, the occurrence of a whistleblower report is but a first instance of the handling process, which consists of a sequence of situations in which IWRs need to convince internal stakeholders of the trustworthiness of the whistleblowing channel.
The IWR is the signaller and the other internal stakeholders (trustors) are receivers. The usefulness of signalling theory lies in the factors that determine which signal the signaller selects to send and how difficult it might be for the receiver to interpret the signal. One such factor is signal consistency or congruence. Connelly et al. (2011, p.52) define signal consistency as the ‘agreement between signals from one source’. Paruchuri, Han and Prakash (2021) note that the prevailing assumption in signalling research is that incongruence occurs within the same evaluative dimension, e.g. differences in how ability is signalled differently to managers than to workers. Specifically, they demonstrate how signal receivers such as top management, middle managers and workers might process positive and negative signalling of ability and integrity differently. Seele and Gatti (2017) assert that signalling theory claims signal senders can always choose whether or not to signal their true quality. Hence, signalling theory seems dependent on flawed assumptions about signal congruence. Instead, our study demonstrates what occurs when congruency appears weak because it is, ultimately, impossible. We focus on IWRs as signal senders of internal whistleblowing channels. The IWRs perceived these channels as having different meanings and implications for stakeholders, yet trustworthiness had to be signalled to each. Our study suggests that this contradiction has to do with the signal that has to be made rather than the need (and the impossibility) to correct it.
With regard to temporality, Taj (2016) noted that signal sequence is understudied in signalling scholarship. Studying communication within a multinational from HQ to local employees, Taj (2016) demonstrates that negative signalling affects signal interpretation and can result in unintended signalling. Our research also looks at signalling across a sequence of situations, but our focus is on signal senders who are not at the top of the hierarchy.
Makarius, Stevens and Tenhiälä (2017) use signalling theory to argue how a favourable firm reputation can both reduce as well as increase voluntary turnover intentions, depending on the signalling environment. In our research, the signalling environment is characterized by multiple receivers. Hence, understanding how they signal can be achieved by exploring what signals IWRs believe they can and need to signal so that their internal stakeholders would trust the internal whistleblowing channels. Hence, IWRs’ beliefs about signal congruency are important in our research.
Signalling trustworthiness by IWRs is essential for establishing trust and the uptake of whistleblowing channels in organizations. In this process, IWRs are single trustees who must convince multiple internal trustors of the trustworthiness of raising and handling concerns. Different trustors prioritize different attributes – ability, benevolence, integrity, transparency and identification – which are fluid and dynamic. Therefore, IWRs are expected to reconcile conflicting expectations over time, as discussed above. Our article examines explicitly how they respond to these expectations.
Method
Sample and data collection
Our explicit research focus is on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels. Highlighting the experiences of IWRs, an under-researched group, we depart from prior empirical research that is largely focused on whistleblowers. We collected primary interview data from four organizations known for having established whistleblowing channels in place for some time. We aimed to examine best practices, hence we drew on our contacts to gain access to exemplar organizations across a range of sectors, including a hospital (UK National Health Service Trust), an engineering multinational, a bank with offices in Western Europe and the US, and a central government agency in Southeast Asia.
On one level, our empirical settings differed. For example, the four organizations had different structures; thus, the IWRs were positioned differently within their organizations. The engineering company and the bank had central and regional IWRs, spread across different countries. In the engineering company, the IWR functions were part of the compliance function. The bank, however, was in the process of switching the IWR from compliance to HR. In the hospital and the government agency, the IWR team comprised fewer people but these were restricted to a single country, whereas in the bank and the engineering company IWRs were present in more than one country. The government agency IWR consisted of auditing professionals, whereas in the hospital, the IWR function was adjacent to that of the HR director and the clinical director. The four organizations also differed in how long they had been running their internal whistleblowing system. At the time of the interviews, the engineering company had its system for seven years, the bank for four years, the hospital for three years and the government agency for nearly two years.
These differences notwithstanding, we found key similarities across research sites. While the contexts differ, the role and constitutive tasks of IWRs were similar in all organizations, ranging from training to coordination as set out above. Relatedly, while our data was gathered in 2016, the core principles under examination – i.e. the constitutive dynamics of trustworthiness as part of the experiences of an IWR – are not specific to a particular period in time and thus remain relevant to practice today. IWRs today share the same responsibilities, challenges and opportunities as our participants. We are conscious that in the interim years, whistleblowing channels have become more prevalent in certain countries and sectors. Yet despite new policies and legislations, in many organizations, implementing such channels remains a relatively new practice and they face similar challenges to the ones we have researched. This field of practice is still emerging and therefore lessons can be learned from the experiences of our research participants.
We snowballed our sample from a small number of existing contacts within the author team with IWRs inside these four organizations and among the outsourced IWRs. We interviewed 23 IWRs within the four organizations, five interviewees who perform outsourced IWR functions or advise organizations on how to operate whistleblowing channels, and two regulators (n = 30). The IWRs in the four organizations had diverse job titles, including compliance officer, HR manager, HR director, legal counsel, investigator and auditor, but shared the core responsibilities of this role as depicted above. The outsourced IWR interviewees included a speak-up consultant, a hotline operator, an ombudsman, an independent advice line operator and a law firm partner. We provide details on our sample in Table 1, using pseudonyms for our interviewees.
Overview of interviewees.
We conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews between November 2015 and January 2016, lasting between 40 and 90 minutes. Questions initially focused on the design, implementation and communication of the internal whistleblowing arrangement, alongside people’s experiences of operating the processes, and of furthering whistleblowers’ concerns within the organization. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. We anonymized participants’ names during the process, replacing them with codes, and used general terms when referring to organizations instead of brand names or specific whistleblowing channels.
Analysis
We used an abductive approach to data analysis, allowing for creative production of hypotheses and novel theoretical insights based on surprising evidence (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). Unlike grounded theory, abductive analysis does not claim that observation or arriving at a finding from the data is theory-free. Instead, it demands that the research team has knowledge of multiple theories, and systematically applies iterative rounds of coding and theoretical discussion to facilitate the discovery of surprise in the data. Anomalies lead to the simultaneous generation and narrowing of theoretical leads toward theory extension or generation (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). We also acknowledge that the research team was a priori influenced by their work with whistleblowers, HR and compliance professionals, as well as literatures on identity, gender, relationality, ethics, voice and trust.
In the first preparatory phase, a member of the research team who had not been involved in conducting the interviews coded the interview transcripts. Open in-case coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) enabled the researchers to revisit the phenomenon being studied in the subsequent stages of the analysis, and also allowed everyone in the team to ‘get into’ the data through exploration of a very rich set of themes, regardless of whether they had conducted the interview themselves or not.
In the second phase, we used cross-case comparison (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to identify common threads and themes. This was an iterative process in which each researcher separately reflected on the issues before paired discussion, helped by using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo to render different coding matrixes of what we, at different stages, considered our main themes within the whole set of data codes. Each team member examined relatively small data excerpts and cast these in light of our respective theoretical expertise. The main themes we came to work with at that early stage included ‘trust’, ‘lack of trust’, ‘communication’, ‘power’, ‘emotions’, ‘reasons for not using speak-up procedure’, ‘reasons for using speak-up procedure’. While we were sensitive to gender dynamics, these did not emerge as salient.
In a third phase, we presented preliminary findings in the form of a report and a paper theorizing this coding in terms of how trust was continuously negotiated and re-created throughout the different stages of the whistleblowing process, that comprised raising, investigating and acting upon the outcome of the investigation. We also solicited feedback from key participants in four organizations studied as part of our methodology. In abductive analysis, recursive ‘sharing research among a community of inquiry stimulates the articulation and refinement of theoretical constructs’ (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 179). Our audiences included: (1) compliance and ethics officers hosted by a European forum for ethics officers; (2) representatives of UK whistleblower support groups hosted by one of the authors’ institution; (3) board members of a number of different organizations in the UK hosted by a professional body; (4) academics at an international conference; and (5) people who provide consultancy services to UK organizations on internal whistleblowing. Their feedback helped us to refine our theoretical contribution further. For the compliance and ethics officers, our findings resonated with their experiences; for the whistleblower support groups, our research explained why whistleblowers continue to experience problems despite using internal whistleblowing channels. The academic audience stimulated us to pursue theoretical crystallization by focusing on trustworthiness rather than trust. We had initially worked on descriptive accounts of dilemmas and difficulties the IWRs faced without a specified theory of trust. This helpful suggestion led us to explore the dimensions of trustworthiness developed in the extant literature (Mayer et al., 1995; Pirson & Malhotra, 2011).
A fourth phase was triggered by a further salient moment in the analysis process, when one of the researchers drew attention to an instance in a transcript where the interviewee described one of the challenges of being an IWR as balancing contradicting needs of two stakeholders. It occurred to us that, thus far, we had theorized problems of maintaining and constantly re-creating trust with whistleblowers throughout the whole process (i.e. as a diachronic phenomenon changing over time), mainly informed by the emerging literature on protracted whistleblowing (Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019). In the instances where there was an explicit mention of synchronic trust work problems in the data (i.e. signalling trustworthiness to different stakeholders simultaneously), we developed additional themes for our data coding. We thus added a coding layer, identifying both diachronic and synchronic problems in signalling trustworthiness. This allowed us to analyse interactions between the different ways in which IWRs attempted to signal trustworthiness. We had two further opportunities to do recursive sharing of these findings from our final stage of our abductive analysis. We used an invitation from a whistleblowing channel service provider to present and discuss our findings in 2022 with IWRs from Western Europe (mostly compliance officers) and also presented a summary at an open symposium attended by compliance officers and integrity scholars in October 2023. Our analysis resonated well with these audiences and we heard a number of corroborating anecdotes from the IWRs in the audience.
Limitations
Before presenting our findings, we bring attention to some limitations of our study. First, our study focuses on those who signal trustworthiness. It is important to note that we have no data on how these signals are interpreted. What is included in our data however is the senders’ perceptions of how their signalling is interpreted.
A second limitation is that we collected our data across four different organizations. This was a deliberate choice as we set out to see commonalities about a similar phenomenon in different contexts. However, it is possible that this research design blurs some insights specific to sector or region.
A third possible limitation is that our data was collected in 2016, which is some years prior to this final reiteration of our article. However, we have grounds to believe that our insights are still valid. One such reason is that we selected organizations which we believed were ahead of others in implementing whistleblowing channels, and thus many more organizations would now be where our sample organizations were in 2016. A corroborating reason for this is our presentation of our findings to practitioner audiences in 2022 and 2023, which resonated well with their experiences at that time.
We present the findings on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels next.
Findings
Our research focused on how IWRs attempt to signal the trustworthiness of internal whistleblowing channels to their stakeholders in the organization. As discussed above, aspects of signalling theory were particularly useful in understanding and articulating the difficulties and uncertainties IWRs experience in making internal whistleblowing channels trustworthy. On the other hand, trustworthiness attributions discussed in the literature review – ability, benevolence, integrity, transparency and identification – allowed us to distinguish several ways in which IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness. Our analysis revealed interactions between different ways of signalling which we characterize as tensions. In this section we present our findings about these interactions, structured into two main groups: synchronic and diachronic tensions. Synchronic tensions stem from IWRs’ perception that they need to signal trustworthiness in different ways to different stakeholders at the same time, whereas diachronic tensions stem from IWR’s perception that the need to signal trustworthiness in a specific way to a particular stakeholder at one moment impedes the signalling of trustworthiness to that same stakeholder at a later time. It is this temporal dimension that will allow us to then theorize about how IWRs struggle to signal trustworthiness of internal whistleblowing channels.
Synchronic tensions
Synchronic tensions relate to how an IWR might signal trustworthiness simultaneously to different stakeholders to generate trust. Our analysis suggests that signalling a particular trustworthiness attribute to one stakeholder can contradict the signalling of the same or another trustworthiness attribute to another stakeholder. The implication is that the challenges IWRs face to be perceived as operating trustworthy organizational whistleblowing channels stem partially from the different stakeholder expectations they need to cater for simultaneously. We present these different synchronic tensions in turn.
Tensions around signalling ability
As stated earlier, ability refers to the trustor believing tha the trustee has the required competence to do what the trustor trusts them to do. One corporate ombudsperson noted that, as an IWR, their trustworthiness depended on their ability to listen to both employees and to top management, but that this listening ability involved tension: The ombudsman should be open to anything, really. Anything that the whistleblower thinks is best positioned in this line of communication [. . .] [Senior managers] would not want to pay an ombudsman to listen to [employee concerns] forever, so to speak, literally. And then carry all that stuff back inside. (Tony, corporate ombudsman, outsourced IWR)
In Tony’s words, being perceived as an able IWR by a whistleblower means being able to make management listen to the whistleblower’s concerns. However, top management only perceives IWRs as competent if they listen to their wishes to filter out concerns about issues that top management may not consider critical to know. These opposing expectations lead to synchronic tensions in IWRs’ efforts to signal ability to different trustors.
We also found other potential limitations in how the IWRs at the bank signalled ability, which involved contradictions and could lead to potential conflicts. Our IWR interviewees mentioned that being able to derive various statistics from the database of whistleblowing concerns was a key aspect of signalling their ability to control internal whistleblowing activity to top management. For example, Hannah explained what is required of her by management in her role as IWR: I can tell you immediately how many cases we have in this division, and in that division, or in a corporate unit. I can tell you in what country we have how many cases, and I can tell you which channel they come from. (Hannah, HR lead for speak-up, engineering)
The IWR explains how they signal to management that possessing this information puts them in a position of control, with full oversight of the situation. While the interviewees acknowledged that senior managers consider the number of times the whistleblowing channel was used as important, for IWRs it was not always clear what the numbers were telling.
Is more or less [whistleblower reports] a good sign or a bad sign? If there was none [no whistleblower had used the channel], I’d be really worried. If there was nobody writing to the CEO, I would be really worried. I don’t want us to get to the extreme – one of the models we looked at where every single thing that an employee could ever possibly raise is counted in their whistleblowing. And it’s not the culture I’m trying to encourage. (Nataliya, operational lead for speak-up, bank)
For this last interviewee, reverting to a more intrusive policy that would have made the number of reports higher wasn’t the best option. Further in the interview, Nataliya referred to a quality label certification for internal whistleblowing arrangements, which certifies that IWRs had done training and that the whistleblowing policy adheres to a set of principles promoted as best practice. Thus, for Nataliya there was a tension between the IWRs signalling ability to control as a factor in understanding the statistics versus their signalling ability to control as an overall professional approach via training.
Tensions around signalling benevolence
Two of the organizations in our sample – the bank and the hospital – provided their employees with contact details of an independent advice line. In contrast to an outsourced whistleblowing channel, an independent advice line does not pass the whistleblower’s concern back to the organization and instead merely advises the whistleblower on how best to raise their concern in line with whistleblowing legislation. An independent advice line might easily advise a whistleblower to report to an outside regulator. Offering employees a route to independent advice signals benevolence to the whistleblower. Still, it might potentially disrupt the complete control and oversight expected by management simply because it turns someone away from the internal whistleblowing channel, as pointed out by an interviewee: I think [the independent advice line] just adds another dimension to it. I don’t think it’s good or bad. I think it’s there for a particular circumstance where somebody feels that an internal mechanism isn’t the one. (Lefteros, operational risk manager, bank)
What Lefteros points out here is that the bank’s internal whistleblowing channel is available for workers to raise a concern, which will be handled internally. At the same time, the bank also provides workers with contact details of an independent helpline, a civil society organization independent from the bank, that gives advice on whistleblowing to anyone under legal privilege. As we previously indicated (cf. the above quotes from Tony, Hannah and Nataliya), IWRs perceived top management requiring of IWRs that they are in control of internal whistleblowing, which they signalled by an ability for selective listening as well as an ability to derive various statistics from the database of whistleblowing reports, knowing exactly the status of each case. However, telling whistleblowers where they can get independent advice is partly giving up such full control. It thus entails contradictory synchronic signalling to two trustors: showing benevolence to the whistleblower undercuts demonstrating (signalling) ability to top management.
In general, the signalling of benevolence by IWRs seemed most easily done towards whistleblowers, as these quotes on ensuring confidentiality, illustrate: The protection of the identity is very important for a reporter, meaning that his identity is not disclosed to either the compliance organization or the company in general, and this forms part of the very first information given to the reporter. (Peter, head of compliance, engineering)
It’s the confidential question again of, ‘Yes, your details will remain here. It doesn’t go any further. You may get a phone call from someone on Wednesday next week, and I’ll give you a reference number, and we’ll talk about it.’ We’re sort of setting the scene of the sympathetic approach. (Tony, corporate ombudsman, outsourced IWR)
These excerpts exemplify how IWRs signal to whistleblowers that they will be safe because they can remain anonymous; the IWR will care for them by ensuring this. This was an essential duty of care toward potential disclosers, given the retaliation whistleblowers often experience (Fotaki et al., 2015; Rothschild & Miethe, 1999). However, our data included instances suggesting that it was challenging for IWRs to signal benevolence simultaneously to managers who could feel threatened by the disclosure: . . . it’s still challenging in terms of how do you say to a manager, ‘Have you heard about the wrongdoings that are happening in your department?’ Because it’s just such a loaded question. (Nataliya, operational lead for speak-up, bank)
Nataliya goes on to explain that it is loaded because managers take it personally, and this situation often leads to requests to identify whistleblowers. What the above example shows is the difficulty the IWRs have in addressing managers with information about potential malpractice under their supervision without these managers feeling attacked or betrayed. In this sense, IWRs struggled to be regarded as ‘of service’ to middle managers, or being on the side of managers.
Tensions around signalling integrity
Integrity means that the trustor believes that the trustee acts according to a set of principles which the trustor finds acceptable. During the interviews, IWRs referred to the text in whistleblowing policies that the organization will not tolerate retaliation against an employee who reports through the whistleblowing channel. This is part of a range of principles to which IWRs signal a commitment: There are commitments in the fact that if there’s substance it will be investigated. That confidentiality would be maintained. The individual who raises the issue will receive some communication to let them know the outcome. Whether action has been taken or not been taken etcetera. (Nataliya, operational lead for speak-up, bank)
The interviewee explains that objectivity (‘it will be investigated’), protection (‘confidentiality’) and follow-up (‘feedback’) are core principles of how the organization will interact with the whistleblower. However, at the same time, this signalling of integrity immediately impedes the signalling of benevolence to middle managers: How it [suggesting to managers that people feel unable to raise a concern in their team] is framed and how it is acted on and how difficult that is for those middle managers and often senior manager to be told negative information [by the IWR] and then not feel that it reflects on their own self-concept. (James, regulator, expert)
James’s quote corroborates that of Nataliya mentioned earlier about how questioning middle managers over the speak-up culture within their teams is ‘such a loaded question’. These illustrate how for IWRs, signalling integrity to whistleblowers can hamper the possibility of signalling benevolence to middle managers. This seemed to be a struggle for IWRs.
Possibilities of signalling identification
Our interviewees pointed out a way to uphold the tensions inherent in signalling whistleblowing channels’ trustworthiness. Some IWRs mentioned how the internal whistleblowing system functioned as part of a desired, aspirational culture change: We have been trying to become . . . to build a culture which is much more adult-to-adult than the patriarchal culture that used to exist in this sector. (Dave, investigator, bank)
In the beginning we were mostly considered as police. More and more they see you as a trusted advisor, because of frequent interactions. (Jose, compliance Latin America, engineering)
We have a plan, but it needs time [to implement it]. It is because [we want to] change employees’ mind-set from fearful to brave. [We want to] change employees’ mind-set that the [whistleblowing system] is useful for the organization as well as for them personally. (Jasmine, secretary, government)
These examples illustrate how IWRs are hopeful that tensions in signalling trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels to different stakeholders will eventually become less intense, by presenting their work as part of shared values and commitments within the organization. It is in line with how Pirson and Malhotra (2011) delineate identification attributions of trustworthiness as the belief that the other person acts according to shared values and commitments. Speculating in terms of this identification dimension, perhaps such a sense of shared values and commitments built over time can compensate for synchronic tensions in signalling trustworthiness. We can speculate that if all internal stakeholders believe the whistleblowing channel is underpinned by intentions to resolve problems, then perhaps more mutual understanding could occur of the different expectations each has towards the internal whistleblowing system.
While it is possible to conceptualize organizational identification in relation to loyalty (Vandekerckhove & Commers, 2004), we note that the term ‘loyalty’ did not appear in our data. Yet, the attribution of identification to internal whistleblowing channels might be the bridge between IWRs as senders of trustworthiness signals and as trusted signal senders (Bacharach & Gambetta, 2001). The example quotes provided as supplementary data show many instances across the different attributions in which IWRs speak as if they personify the internal whistleblowing channels.
Diachronic tensions
Tensions around the signalling of trustworthiness attributes do not only occur when the IWR feels compelled to simultaneously cater to different stakeholder expectations. Our analysis also indicated tensions and contradictions in signalling trustworthiness to the same stakeholder at different stages in the whistleblowing process, i.e. diachronic tensions. Hence, besides synchronic tensions, there are also diachronic tensions. Our data includes instances where IWRs appeared to be signalling trustworthiness in self-defeating ways. More precisely, IWRs thought the credibility of their signalling was negatively affected by their inconsistent signalling over time in a sequence of different situations. One such sequence was promising confidentiality when whistleblowing, and then maintaining confidentiality during investigation and further judicial steps. Another sequence was starting with communication but later on facing legal restrictions on transparency, stopping them from sharing details of investigation outcomes and sanctions against wrongdoers. We present these findings now.
Difficulty of maintaining confidentiality
Our interviewees mentioned confidentiality towards whistleblowers as a very important aspect of trustworthy whistleblowing channels. As we illustrated in the previous sections, confidentiality was signalled either as benevolence (IWRs will keep the whistleblower safe) or as integrity (confidentiality as a principle of the handling process). In training and at the initial stage of the whistleblowing process, employees are promised confidentiality if they blow the whistle, to encourage them to share sufficient information about alleged wrongdoing. A good example is one of our interviewees meeting the whistleblower in secrecy at a restaurant outside the building. However, once a concern gets to the investigation stage, keeping the whistleblower’s identity confidential becomes problematic: I don’t think it can be as anonymous as you’d like to think. It would definitely not be talked about openly, but, you know the thing about ‘I told everyone to keep it a secret.’ So, there’ll be whatever would be involved. Which you’d always have, if you involved the committee, and the investigation team, compliance or whoever, the HR team. At least 15 people. (Beatrice, policy lead for speak-up, bank)
Beatrice explains here that the promise of confidentiality might be understood by the whistleblower as a one-to-one confidentiality, i.e. only the initial contact person will know the identity of the whistleblower. But the reality of handling a whistleblower report is that the circle of people with access to that information grows much wider as the investigation progresses. Whistleblowing scholars and policy experts note this difficulty in maintaining confidentiality throughout the disclosure processes (Council of Europe, 2014; Miceli et al. 2008). Another example from our data was shared by Esther: We had to write to the individual to say, ‘Look, for us to progress this it will involve us passing it over to the workforce performance team. Therefore, they will know your name and whatever else.’ (Esther, HR manager, bank)
In this example, having initially signalled benevolence and integrity by promising confidentiality, the IWR later moderated her promise after an employee actually raised a concern through the whistleblowing channel. This is a diachronic tension because the difficulty in signalling trustworthiness in a particular situation is created by how trustworthiness has previously been signalled under different circumstances. This posed a problem for IWRs in our study with which they seemed to be struggling. Such an apparent struggle was also evident when closing a case, to which we turn next.
Impossibility of transparency
A second diachronic tension we found relates to IWRs struggling with a lack of transparency. Trustworthiness based on an attribution of transparency would occur when the IWR shares information that is relevant to the trustor (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011). We coded this a number of times in our data, but always in combination with an expression of difficulty. IWRs were not able to share information with the whistleblower about the outcome of the handling process, i.e. the findings of the investigations and the sanctions taken against the wrongdoer. IWRs perceived this as impeding their trustworthiness.
Most of these difficulties stem from legal restraints on communicating details of the outcome of an investigation to the whistleblower.
So, we always say, ‘Thank you very much for your report. We are going to investigate it thoroughly, and we will do whatever is necessary.’ We do not say whether it’s correct or it’s not correct, and we do not say what we do afterwards, because the law doesn’t allow it. (Hannah, HR lead for speak-up, engineering)
Effectively, all we can do is say, ‘We are considering taking some action,’ but we’re not specific and we never tell them we have, or we haven’t. (Imke, hotline provider, outsourced IWR)
Obviously if the activity that has been complained about were to continue then that would be evidence that it hasn’t been dealt with properly. But you would hope that the issue that’s been raised is stopped. But you won’t get detail about what action has been taken against an individual, or where there is something of substance that’s been investigated and found to be true. (Beatrice, policy lead for speak-up, bank)
These quotes illustrate that IWRs struggle to signal trustworthiness when rounding off the whistleblowing process. To achieve this, they would need to signal transparency, by explaining how they investigated the concern and divulging what was found. Data protection and privacy regulation prevent them from doing so. Instead, they can only communicate a message of thanks for raising a concern, which is vague on details. Internal investigations can take many months and if there has been no communication with the whistleblower between the making of the whistleblowing report and the closing of the case, this silence makes the signalling even more difficult.
Not all wrongdoing warrants the wrongdoer’s dismissal after an investigation, and some of the concerns whistleblowers raise could be mistaken. In these cases, feedback is unlikely and it will not be apparent to whistleblowers that their internal whistleblowing has been taken seriously. The IWRs we interviewed saw this as a significant challenge to achieving closure on the whistleblower’s claim while maintaining their trust in the organization.
[. . .] people usually imagine the compliance officer can do whatever they want, and it is not like that. (Jose, compliance Latin America, engineering)
This interviewee indicated that the IWR’s ‘have their hands tied’ in terms of what they can achieve. It’s important to note that the lack of transparency at the end of the process undercuts the earlier signalling of ability, benevolence, or integrity. As an IWR explains: We talk about it being confidential, we talk about it being safe. And the fact that it is safe, when an employee goes through it, nobody hears about it. So, get it wrong, everyone knows; get it right, no one knows. (Nataliya, operational lead for speak-up, bank)
The IWR mentions a lack of transparency here, that stems not so much from a legal constraint but rather from the handling process itself. When a whistleblower report is handled well, the whistleblower’s identity will remain confidential and they will not experience retaliation. The whistleblower themself will know this but it cannot be communicated to others as a signal of trustworthiness of the whistleblowing channel.
We summarize our findings in Table 2. Synchronous tensions involve either contradictory signalling of trustworthiness attributions to different stakeholders, or signalling to one stakeholder precluding signalling trustworthiness to another stakeholder. These tensions stem from different expectations stakeholders have, which are related to their specific position and roles within the organization. As such, it may be impossible to fully resolve synchronic tensions. Nevertheless, these tensions might be lessened if signalling trustworthiness can also happen through identification attributions.
Synchronic and diachronic tensions: summary of findings.
Diachronic tensions stem from the signal sender’s mistake in choosing the reference point from which to signal trustworthiness. Our data suggests that IWRs saw no other option than to over-signal at the beginning. This was at least the case with their signalling around confidentiality. Speculating in terms of signalling theory, one could assert that there is deliberate false signalling here by IWRs, for example, in the way they word the promise of confidentiality in the whistleblowing policy or when they offer secret meetings outside the organization’s premises. They do this knowing that at the end of the process they will be unable to signal transparency attributions, which also undermines their signalling from the beginning. The IWRs understood very well that this unsustainable signalling hurt the trustworthiness of the internal whistleblowing channels. However, they did not propose any solution, for example, making weaker but more frequent claims about confidentiality.
We can discuss IWRs’ lack of transparency signalling in light of signal sequence (Taj, 2016). Our findings suggest that even when senders are aware of signal inconsistency over time, they do not always know how to compensate for that in their earlier signalling. We focused on how the IWRs see themselves as trying to make whistleblowing channels trustworthy, and what IWRs believe their weak spot is. They identified the impossibility to be transparent about the outcome of an investigation or sanctions taken against a wrongdoer as the most important obstacle in achieving this. We posit that these diachronic tensions can be resolved to the extent that signalling is teleological, i.e. the end of the process – or the final interaction in a foreseen sequence – is taken as the reference point for signalling trustworthiness throughout the process, and thus also at the beginning.
We argue – in contrast to assumptions within signalling theory – that teleological signalling will best encompass an understanding and communication of the inevitable ambiguity and multiplicity of these systems when viewed from multiple perspectives. We expand upon this in the next section.
Discussion
In the previous section we presented our findings on how the signalling of different attributions of trustworthiness to the various internal stakeholders interacted with one another. We found instances where the IWR was signalling trustworthiness to one stakeholder in a way that contradicted the trustworthiness signals to other stakeholders. We referred to these tensions as synchronic because they concern different stakeholders simultaneously. We also found instances where the IWR expressed difficulty signalling trustworthiness to a particular stakeholder because of how they had signalled trustworthiness to that stakeholder at an earlier stage. We referred to these tensions as diachronic because they concerned the same stakeholder across time.
Although the four organizations studied were different in terms of management structure as well as the age of their internal whistleblowing channels, we found that challenges and possibilities for IWRs to signal trustworthiness attributes relate more to the whistleblowing process itself than to the structure of the organization in which they might occur. Our research allows us to discuss our novel theoretical contributions and recommendations for practice.
Signalling trustworthiness in new contexts
Our research focus was on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels. Our insights help to better understand attempts to generate trust in the context of new organizational practices and technologies. The synchronic tensions that emerged from our data indicate that IWRs send out quite diverse signals. On first glance, read through prevailing signalling theory assumptions, this suggests their signalling congruency is weak. However, on closer examination of our complex case, what appears as weak congruency actually relates to the underlying ambiguity and impossibility of signalling the complexity of the system. The implication for signalling theory is that IWRs, as signal senders, may feel compelled to ‘defeat’ the distortion in their signalling environment. However, our research offers insights that incongruent signal sets, from the signal senders’ point of view, may require an acceptance of and a communication of complexity and ambiguity to stakeholders involved in the process, an important yet neglected aspect inherent to signalling trustworthiness that our study highlighted, of the reality studied through signalling theory.
In particular, the signal incongruency amounted to portraying whistleblowing channels as having different purposes. For example, as mechanisms to address employee concerns, we identified instances of contradictory signalling inbuilt in the system. Weak signal congruency did not appear to be a deliberate strategy of our interviewees. While IWRs believed they had an understanding of what signals the different stakeholders were expecting, they did not know how to manage these expectations. Thus, theorizing from a signal sender’s point of view, our research suggests that weak signal congruency may result from a signal sender’s response to various organizational stakeholders’ needs. This requires IWRs to communicate about the complexity and impossibility of congruent signalling, rather than reducing distortion in their signalling environment. We speculated that such communication could be achieved through the signalling of identification and teleological signalling.
We must consider that operating whistleblowing channels is a relatively new practice. There is still little attention to IWR functions in professional training, and stakeholders are anxious about the implications of whistleblowing channels for their own roles (e.g. IWRs’ assertion that middle management takes it personally). Hence, with regard to trust in new organizational practices or technologies, our research suggests that it is essential to consider the challenges faced by those who need to convey trustworthiness to stakeholders. Research on signalling as well as trust scholarship mostly focuses on more established organizational practices and technologies, such as marketing products to customers or communicating to investors. It is therefore a contribution of our research to provide insight into the difficulties of signalling trustworthiness of new organizational practices. We theorize these tensions as arising on the one hand from signalling trustworthiness to different stakeholders at the same time (synchronic tensions), and on the other hand signalling trustworthiness to the same stakeholder over time (diachronic tensions). Our insights highlight a persistent challenge for IWRs – how to establish themselves as credible signallers of the trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels. This issue, we speculate, could be less problematic if accompanied by identification-based trustworthiness. While some of our IWRs were hopeful in this regard, none had a clear strategy for achieving it.
Temporality
We believe our findings involving temporality point to a complexity that is not addressed in trustworthiness literature. We explored how IWRs attempt to make internal whistleblowing channels trustworthy, and our findings suggest that ability-trustworthiness can be trustor-specific. IWRs simultaneously signal different and often contradicting abilities to different trustors. The related findings we observed concerned the limited potential for synchronic trustworthiness attributions. Specifically, our findings go beyond previous research (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011) in highlighting synchronic signalling of trustworthiness by a single trustee to multiple trustors and observing that for IWRs the use of specific attributes precludes the signalling of other trustworthiness attributes. In short, it is not easy to signal everything to everyone simultaneously, and this is especially so if complexity and ambiguity are denied or ‘swept under the carpet’ with a fantasy of final signal congruence.
Our findings on diachronic temporality also further trustworthiness scholarship. The whistleblowing process – receiving the concern, investigating and acting upon it and communicating outcomes – entails a sequence of interactions that are characterized by differences in shareable information and, to add a level of complexity, are at least partly determined by previously signalled attributes of trustworthiness. This appeared to make our interviewees feel unable to sustain earlier trustworthiness attributes such as benevolence or integrity, as described earlier. Our interviewees found that this lack of transparency tarnishes the integrity of the whistleblowing channel. In this sense, our research suggests that transparency can moderate other trustworthiness dimensions.
However, since it is beyond the control of IWRs to increase that transparency, it is plausible to assert that some trustworthiness dimensions, such as benevolence and integrity, might not be sustainable throughout the whistleblowing process. IWRs will need to take that into account if they want stakeholders to trust the internal whistleblowing channels. While scholars have focused on the mechanisms of trust and how to ‘make oneself trustworthy’ via the act of convincing a trustor of one’s commitment to their interests (Hardin, 2002, p. 34) or by looking at different personality traits that predict individuals’ trustworthiness (Levine, Bitterly, Cohen & Schweitzer, 2018), our analysis points to something slightly different at play. Specifically, we problematize the stability of trustworthiness and, therefore, the value and perhaps even the ethics inherent to the act of convincing.
Extant understanding of the signalling of trustworthiness indicates that individuals learn about each other’s trustworthiness over time (Six, 2007) while the frequency of interaction between trustee and trustor also impacts trustworthiness (Seifert et al., 2010). This line of research assumes that the constitutive aspects of trust remain the same over time, as do the actors involved. In contrast, we show that in complex organizational settings the constitutive aspects of trust – benevolence, integrity and ability – can be deployed in different ways over time, depending on the perceived needs of trustors. Therefore, our insights highlight trustworthiness’s contingent and political nature, which determines responses to various stakeholders’ needs and interests. Faced with multiple demands emanating from a boundary-spanning role, IWRs might proceed wisely by attempting to communicate about the synchronic and diachronic tensions, thereby establishing identification attributions of trustworthiness. Returning to Boersma et al.’s (2003) conception of actors, one can indeed get someone else to make attributions of trustworthiness by deploying the pliable and contingent constitutive aspects of trustworthiness in specific ways. Through our in-depth analysis of a complex organizational setting in which trustworthiness temporally operates across multiple dimensions, internal tensions emerge that enable us to see the political and power-laden aspects of this concept. More specifically, our findings bring a novel insight concerned with the temporality of this process by suggesting that the continuous (re)production of trust needs to address both synchronic and diachronic tensions which the IWR faces. Thus, it highlights the value of the approach adopted and the setting of whistleblowing for researching these questions.
These findings also provide novel insights into trust as a process. Scholars advocate researching the ‘how’ of trusting to understand trust as a continuous and dynamic process (Möllering, 2013). Thus far, there is very limited research with only a few existing studies finding that trust is not static but has to be continuously (re)produced and is also relational, emerging from micro-level and meso-organizational-level interactions between trustor and trustee (Fotaki, 2014). Möllering (2013) writes that this reproduction is formative not only for individual identification but also for collective identification by stressing the importance of different attributes of trustworthiness operating across levels: ‘trusting signals and confirms an actor’s willingness to belong to a collective’ (p. 294). In this sense, the identification dimension of the would-be whistleblowers vis-a-vis their organization might determine their trust or otherwise in the whistleblowing channels, because the belief that one is part of a collective or that everyone works according to shared values and commitments, moderates signal inconsistencies and distortion in the signalling environment. Critical to this however is the willingness of IWRs, senior managers and all involved to be open and transparent about the ambiguities and complexities of a system such as internal whistleblowing channels. Only then can ideas of identification and mutual understanding as promoted by Pirson and Malhotra (2011) be taken seriously.
Whistleblowing
Our final contribution is to the whistleblowing literature, more precisely by paying attention to those who operate internal whistleblowing procedures. The argument put forward by Smaili et al. (2023) is that compliance officers should put effort in aligning expectations of both sides by ‘educating’ both employees and top managers on their shared interest in due process when handling whistleblower reports. Building on Smaili et al. (2023), who see the need for compliance officers to ‘educate’ stakeholders, our findings suggest that IWRs are unaware of having a mandate to proactively build culture. Instead, the IWRs we interviewed were mainly stuck in their synchronic and diachronic tensions. These tensions seem related to notions of power within the organization, especially synchronic tensions. Our research further complements that of Smaili et al. (2023) by using signalling theory and trustworthiness attributions to provide insights into diachronic tensions IWRs struggle with. It shows that instead of identical cycles of trust building, practical limitations of trustworthiness across different phases determine how one ought to signal trustworthiness at the outset.
Recommendations for practice
Based on these insights we can suggest the following recommendations for practice. First, we believe it can help IWRs to become aware of the tensions in their signalling. This can be done by mapping the various signals sent to different stakeholders about the whistleblowing channels. Acknowledging that not all tensions can be resolved, a further step can be considered in which such a mapping is communicated to the different stakeholders, for example in training, with transparency around complexity and ambiguity. Perhaps this could be seen as a form of ‘educating’ in the sense of Smaili et al. (2023).
Our second recommendation to IWR practitioners is to set different agendas for dealing with synchronic tensions on the one hand and diachronic tensions on the other. It seems to us that while the diachronic tensions seem to be self-inflicted and can be avoided, the synchronic tensions might not be fully resolvable. Synchronic tensions stem from different expectations that internal stakeholders have of whistleblowing channels. It seems to us that such tension can be lessened by creating mutual understanding of each other’s expectations, that workers, middle managers and top management remain distinct positions within an organizational structure, and it is unavoidable that these positions come with different expectations.
Third, one speculation from our research is that identification signalling may be able to reduce synchronic tensions. However, IWRs lacked strategy to achieve this. We recommend IWRs to seek ways to create a shared belief that the whistleblowing channel is underpinned by due process that is well intended towards resolving problems. It might help if other internal stakeholders would also provide such identification signals. Longevity in post, and reinforcing identification through communities of practice external to the organization enabling engagement with other IWRs, will also assist.
Our fourth recommendation for practitioners is to avoid diachronic tensions by refraining from over-signalling, especially in the form of over-promising confidentiality and feedback. It might be difficult to appropriately weigh one’s own signalling and make judgements about over-promising. Still, IWRs could, through their professional bodies, seek to establish communities of practice to help each other with such analyses. Any intermediate signalling of trustworthiness needs to be benchmarked on what confidentiality and transparency can be provided at the end of the handling process, when a whistleblowing case needs to be closed.
Conclusion and Future Research
This article presented our research on how IWRs signal trustworthiness to various internal stakeholders (whistleblowing employees, line managers and top management) in four different organizations. The IWRs in our study were signalling trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels in various and often contradicting ways to different potential trustors within the organization. Our findings led us to theorize contributions to signalling theory, trustworthiness scholarship, and whistleblowing research. Our study suggests that interactions between trustworthiness dimensions matter because IWRs struggle with synchronic and diachronic tensions in their signalling that can be contradicting and self-defeating.
While our contributions stem from our explicit focus on IWRs as signal senders, this approach also poses limitations to our generalizations and theorizing. Neither signalling theory nor trustworthiness dimensions have been used to study internal whistleblowing channels. Hence, future research could seek to complement our insights of how IWRs make sense of trustworthy whistleblowing channels, by approaching the trustworthiness of these channels from the perspective of other stakeholders, ideally through qualitative research with internal whistleblowers (i.e. who have not blown the whistle externally yet), middle managers or top management. Given the importance of confidentiality and lack of transparency that IWRs indicated in our research, future research might specifically seek to generate insight into how other stakeholders perceive the trustworthiness signalling done by IWRs.
We also speculated how signalling identification trustworthiness might make signalling tensions less problematic. Future research could focus on how identification attributions interact with other trustworthiness dimensions and whether these can indeed compensate for synchronic and diachronic tensions.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-oss-10.1177_01708406251317262 – Supplemental material for Signalling Trustworthiness of Internal Whistleblowing Channels in Organizations: Temporality matters!
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-oss-10.1177_01708406251317262 for Signalling Trustworthiness of Internal Whistleblowing Channels in Organizations: Temporality matters! by Wim Vandekerckhove, Marianna Fotaki, Kate Kenny and D. Derya Özdemir Kaya in Organization Studies
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: the research stems from a project jointly funded by the ESRC and ACCA.
Research ethics
Data was collected and processed with permission from University of Greenwich Research Ethics Committee
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