Activating employees’ motivation to increase intentions to report wrongdoings: evidence from a large-scale survey experiment

Abstract

Public servants are frequently confronted with unethical behaviour. Research shows intentions to report wrongdoings are increased by activating public service motivation (PSM). We study whether public servants display different reactions to different wrongdoers and whether intentions are also affected by prosocial motivation (PM). We employed a survey experiment on 11,728 healthcare workers. The results show activating PSM or PM increase intentions to report patients, but not colleagues. However, effects are small. What is more, activation of PM has a larger effect for respondents with lower PM-levels. We discuss implications for the literature on the interplay between ethics and motivations.