The Whistleblowing Guide

APPENDIX 1Speak‐up Arrangements – Key Theories

We found several theories to be crucial in informing our work on speak‐up arrangements. They are summarized here briefly for reference. Each is part of an ongoing research agenda and is therefore changing and evolving over time, so this summary is incomplete, but hopefully gives a good indication of the background. We link these theories together, and by doing so build upon each. By supplementing this with the analysis of our empirical work we culminate with our proposed framework for understanding and implementing speak up arrangements.

EMPLOYEE VOICE

We start our framework with employee voice, because whistleblowing is an act of employees using their voice in their organizations to speak up about wrongdoing. Employee voice is more of a research stream than a theory, but this area of inquiry has important implications for whistleblowing studies. There are three general streams in the area of employee voice: the organizational behavior (OB) stream, the human resource management (HRM) stream and the employee relations (ER) stream. HRM/ER scholars tend to see voice as a way in which employees influence work practices and decisions either directly or indirectly through collective representation, and OB tends to see voice as a matter of individual workers communicating information for the benefit of the organization. The divergence in streams has led some researchers to try to synthesize the two views, which is done by moving away ...