The Silent Samaritan Syndrome: Why the Whistle Remains Unblown

Whistle blowing programs have been central to numerous government, legislative, and regulatory reform efforts in recent years. To protect investors, corporate boards have instituted numerous measures to promote whistle blowing. Despite significant whistle blowing incentives, few individuals blow the...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: MacGregor, Jason (Author) ; Stuebs, Martin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer 2014
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2014, Volume: 120, Issue: 2, Pages: 149-164
Further subjects:B Silence
B Incentives
B Fraud triangle
B Awareness
B moral competence
B Community influences
B Rationalization
B Professional Identity
B Moral Behavior
B Whistleblowing
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Summary:Whistle blowing programs have been central to numerous government, legislative, and regulatory reform efforts in recent years. To protect investors, corporate boards have instituted numerous measures to promote whistle blowing. Despite significant whistle blowing incentives, few individuals blow the whistle when presented with the opportunity. Instead, individuals often remain fallaciously silent and, in essence, become passive fraudsters themselves. Using the fraud triangle and models of moral behavior, we model and analyze fallacious silence and identify factors that may motivate an individual to rationalize fallacious silence. We use a survey of graduate accounting students to test hypothesized factors that contribute to fallacious silence rationalizations in an academic setting. We find evidence that the ability to rationalize fallacious silence is related to community influences and personal traits such as awareness and moral competence.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1639-9