Semester Award Granted

Summer 2025

Submission Date

July 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

James Wainberg

Abstract

Whistleblowers play an instrumental role in exposing organizational wrongdoing and, thereby, helping to remedy the damage endured by stakeholders. However, whistleblower retaliation is rising, its personal impacts to the whistleblower are severe, and fears of retaliation serve as a strong deterrent to prospective whistleblowers. In this dissertation, I draw on motivation crowding theory, which posits that external interventions can crowd out or crowd in intrinsic motivations for engaging in a behavior. I employ a third-party perspective of motivation crowding theory and utilize a 2x3x2 between-participants experimental design to examine factors that impact employees’ perceptions of whistleblower intent and acts of retaliation. Results indicate when the reported fraud would have benefited a group versus only the perpetrator, the whistleblower is viewed as less altruistic, and both managerial and coworker retaliation are more likely. Therefore, it is particularly important to identify tactics that are effective in improving employees’ altruistic whistleblower perceptions and mitigating whistleblower retaliation among these group-benefiting frauds. I find, within the group-benefiting reported fraud, whistleblower recognition is an effective means of improving employees’ whistleblower perceptions when the whistleblower received either a cash reward or no reward for reporting. While whistleblower recognition for group-benefiting reported frauds is primarily effective in reducing managerial retaliation when the whistleblower received either a tangible reward or no reward, it is most effective at reducing coworker retaliation when the whistleblower was rewarded with cash. Within individual-benefiting reported frauds, my findings are more limited but offer support for the beneficial impact whistleblower recognition can have on reducing managerial retaliation when the whistleblower receives no reward or a cash reward, and coworker retaliation when the whistleblower receives a cash reward. My retaliation findings suggest that the drivers of managerial and coworker retaliation are different, thus, it is valuable to consider the impact company programs and responses have on both levels of retaliation.

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