Prospective Teachers' Value Orientations as Determinants of Preference for External and Anonymous Whistleblowing.

Abstract

Whistle-blowing indicates disclosing organizational wrongdoings resulting in harm to third parties. An individual's decision to blow the whistle might be based upon organizational, situational or personal factors. This study inquires the relationship between value orientations of prospective teachers and choices for whistle-blowing with particular modes and two concepts of individual value orientations, individualism/collectivism and idealism/relativism. Descriptive statistics and Correlation matrix were used for the analysis of the data. Results revealed that, prospective teachers prefer anonymous reporting more than external reporting. The results showed that there is no relationship between the values and intentions of the prospective teachers to blow the whistle externally, and anonymously. While there have been many studies examining whistle blowing with different factors in especially marketing, there has not been any intention for examining it in education. Thus, this paper aimed to contribute to the extant literature by choosing Turkey and education as context as most studies have been conducted in the Western cultures, and in accounting or marketing service. Keywords: Education, prospective teachers, Turkey, value orientation, whistle-blowing Introduction Whistle-blowing means disclosing organizational wrongdoings resulting in harm to third parties. It is an effective corporate governance mechanism against organizational wrongdoings. Having come into the limelight with the fall of American corporations such as Enron due to acts of wrongdoings, whistle-blowing is one of the responses that organization members show in relation to organizational wrongdoings (Jubb, 1999; Miceli and Near, 2005; Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 2010). Whistle-blowing is a prosocial behavior in organization. Since whistle-blowers release information deliberately, and employ unconventional methods to make the disclosure, they are at high risk such as being fired. Therefore, individual traits such as positive and negative affectivity and proactive personality affect the evaluation of wrongdoing and whistle-blowing as well as the type of wrongdoing (Jubb, 1999; Miceli et. al, 2001; Near et al. (2004). In addition, individual's perception and moral reasoning are also related to decision-making process for blowing the whistle (Miceli and Near, 1985). Miceli et. al (1991; 2001) argue that whistle-blowers are likely to be valued individuals because they feel constrained to report wrongdoing by their own sense of moral behavior. Moral reasoning requires the ability to recognize and correctly evaluate any ethical dilemma. Besides, observers do not report when they do not view the form of wrongdoing in question as requiting action on moral grounds. In addition, Liyanarachchi and Newdick (2009) argued that moral courage and moral reasoning are two of the most important factors to understand one's propensity to blow the whistle, and they examined the effect of students' level of moral reasoning, on their intention to whistle blow. Thus significant research has investigated the whistleblowing on account of demographic and rational decision-making processes (i.e. Near, Spector, 1982; Brabeck (1984); Miceli and Near, 1985; Miceli et al. (2001; Miethe and Rothschild, 1994; McDevitt and Van Hise, 2002; Keenan, 2002; Tavakoli et al., 2003; and Near et al. 2004; Reidenback and Robin, 1990; Cohen et al. 1993, 2001; and Cruz et al. 2000), Rhodes and Swain (2004); Ohnishi et al (2008, Chiu (2002). Nayir and Herzig (2012) studied the relationship between value orientations of Turkish managers and choices for particular whistleblowing modes. They found significant relationship between external and anonymous whistleblowing, and the level of idealism has a negative relationship with an external-anonymous mode of whistleblowing. Educators face widely different ethical cases at schools and they need to be competent in accordance with the ethical cases that they come up against in schools. …

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