Organizational responses to whistleblowers: How to overcome willful ignorance relating to social identity processes in organizations

Abstract

Whistleblowers reporting misconduct often trigger defensive responses within organizations. We attribute this to the experience of social identity threat, a phenomenon that prevents organizational learning and improvement. Theory and research highlight three types of barriers people in organizations need to overcome before responding to potential problems. They have to accept: (1) the validity of the concern (2) their responsibility to act and (3) their ability to address it. We connect these into an integrative framework that offers a new perspective to understand willful ignorance in organizations. It specifies what managers, regulators, and employees can do to deal more constructively with early signals of organizational problems and offers an agenda for how future studies might extend existing knowledge on organizational responsiveness.