The Importance of Whistleblowing Persistence in Audit Team Member Peer Reporting: The Impact of Communication Medium and Client Importance

Abstract

The importance of auditors blowing the whistle when they encounter a situation of perceived wrongdoing cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, however, the initial report of wrongdoing is often insufficient to remedy the situation. Thus, this chapter investigates auditors’ whistleblowing persistence, measured as the number of times an auditor is willing to repeatedly report the wrongdoing, if he/she is not satisfied with the initial and/or subsequent responses received. Specifically, this chapter examines auditors’ persistence when reporting the wrongdoing of a peer auditor on the same audit team. Results show communication medium utilized within the audit team (instant message vs video) and client importance (high vs low) influence persistence in a 2 × 2 experiment. The manipulation for communication medium uses actual prerecorded videos and instant messages. Results related to one of our four hypotheses show that whistleblowing persistence is affected by client importance; that is, auditors are more likely to persist in reporting when working on a less important client. Furthermore, the findings suggest that client importance and communication medium interact such that communication medium affects persistence on more important clients, but not less important clients. Specifically, when working on a more important client, auditors are more likely to persist in reporting when interacting with their peers via video compared to via instant message. Given that whistleblowing persistence is often necessary to obtain a satisfactory resolution to the issue at hand, our results suggest avenues to encourage whistleblowing persistence should be further explored.

Citation

Davis, P.L., Donnelly, A.M. and Radtke, R.R. (2024), "The Importance of Whistleblowing Persistence in Audit Team Member Peer Reporting: The Impact of Communication Medium and Client Importance", Shawver, T.J. (Ed.) Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting (Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting, Vol. 26), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 55-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1574-076520240000026003