The Relation of Whistleblowing and Self-Efficacy

According to Bandura (2009), self-efficacy refers to the cognitive perception of competency and effectiveness in carrying out occupational duties and goals. The expectations of self-efficacy determine whether an individual are able to exhibit coping behavior and how long effort will be sustained when facing of obstacles. Individuals who have high self-efficacy will exert effort, then well executed, and leads to successful outcomes. While individual who have low self-efficacy are likely to give up early and fail. People’s self-efficacy beliefs in determine their level of motivation, as reflected in how much effort they will exert in an endeavour and how long they will persevere in the face of obstacles (Bandura, 1989).

In the wake of many corporate scandals, involve accounting firms, whistleblowing has become an important in monitoring mechanism. According to Holtzhausen (2007), whistleblowing is understood as the act of disclosing information on malpractices that need to be corrected or terminated in order to protect public interest. Whistleblowing usually focused on potentially illegal, unethical or improper acts. Whistleblowing can be communication or information sharing that is unauthorized by the target organization; communication to an empowered entity. It is also the potential or desired to corrective the outcome or consequence. There have a lot of countries has legality of whistleblowing that create mechanisms for reporting wrongdoing and provide legal protections to whistle blowers. Countries such as Australia, Canada, European Union, India, United Kingdom, United States and etc.

In an audit context, whistleblowing is such of conflict for auditors. The auditor needed to maintain confidentiality and loyalty to the client. However, the auditor may be required to report sensitive information that could harm the client and they will be perceived as being disloyal. In the Enron case, it has been observed that none of the audit staff of Arthur Andersen, Enron’s auditors, blew the whistle when the partner-in-charge of the audit advised the audit managers to shred the documents (Toffler & Reingold, 2003). Sometimes, the audit staff do not want to reluctant to whistle-blow on colleagues because this might effect to their future interpersonal relationships.

Based on the journal we found, there have the relation between both self-efficacy and whistleblowing, they can be impact for each other, such as effects of Self-efficacy on Whistle-blowing in Public Procurement. Before action, an individual will assess their skills and capabilities, then transform those skills into actions. The stronger the confidence, may serve stronger effort, then greater perseverance and resiliency in the face of adversity of whistleblowing. According to Kumar and Lal (2006), a low sense of self-efficacy is associated with stress, depression, anxiety, and helplessness in terms of feeling.

Furthermore, there are also some of the relevant information that can be impact to self-efficacy and whistleblowing, attitudes toward whistle-blowing and whistle-blowing intentions. Attitudes toward the behaviour are the sum of the individual’s beliefs of the behavioural consequences and evaluation of the consequences. Individual’s attitudes will have direct effect on whistleblowing intentions, they will assessing how favourable or unfavourable be to whistleblowing.

The second relevant information that can be impact to self-efficacy and whistleblowing is perceived behavioural control and whistle-blowing intentions. According to Ajzen (1991), the greater the individual’s perceived behavioural control, the more possibility for his or her intention to perform the behaviour that based on the theory of planned behaviour. Ajzen (1991) also argued that perceived behavioural control is closely related to Bandura’s (1977) concept of self-efficacy and Bandura (1997) argued that self-efficacy is a person’s expectancy about whether he or she can successfully perform the behaviour in question.

Personal responsibility for reporting and whistle-blowing intentions can also be the relevant information that can be impact to self-efficacy and whistleblowing. According to Curtis (2006, p. 193), it argues that responsibility for reporting can be “influenced by feelings of social responsibility to colleagues and employer, attitudes towards profession, the number of other observers and personal ethical values.” This is because individual will normally feel that they have obligation to report questionable acts by their moral value of right and wrong or role responsibility to their jobs and organisation. Curtis (2006) further argued that when there is many individuals observe the wrongdoing and remain silent, the diffusion of personal responsibility may occur, thus reducing personal responsibility to prevent harm to the organisation or society, this is called the bystander effect. However, Miceli et al. (1991) found that internal auditors were more likely to whistle-blow, when it was perceived as part of their role responsibility.

We have also found the research about self-efficacy and whistleblowing which is an investigation of students’ willingness to report threats of violence in campus communities. Based on their research, it was almost seventy percent (69%) of students endorsed being “at least somewhat willing” to report a threatening peer. Self-efficacy toward service is not sufficient by itself to facilitate threat reporting. The important thing is the college need to let the students to trust in the college support system and campus connectedness in order to have a positive impact.