Findings

Presentation of the Findings

Whistleblower incentives and protection has become a significant issue of concern in the field of finance. Many organizations are unable to address unethical practices effectively as a result of lack of adequate whistleblower incentives and protection. This section presents the findings obtained after conducting the study. Various themes that emerged from the findings are discussed in detail. Sample of quotation from the respondents are also included to highlight the themes that have been discovered. In addition, a discussion of how the findings relate to the research questions, anticipated themes and the literature is provided. Finally, a summary capturing the main points of the sections is provided.

Overview of Themes Discovered

Three themes were discovered from the findings of the study including ethical leadership, mutual trust, and social welfare. The respondents indicated that ethical leadership is an important factor in ensuring employees do not engage in corruption or unethical practices in the organization. The findings also indicate that mutual trust must be developed in the finance department to ensure that leaders do not micromanage staff members. Micro-management has its negative effects and may encourage employees to engage in unethical practices when the supervisor is not around. The findings also indicate that by promoting ethical practices in the organization, it is possible to achieve social justice and welfare in the society.

Discussion of Themes

Ethical Leadership

Most of the participants indicate that the organization has not developed effective policies and procedures for whistle blower incentives and protection. This has made it difficult for whistle blowers in the finance department to be compensated. In addition, most employees in the department have information concerning unethical behaviors but cannot report because they are afraid that they may be victimized. This is particularly true in cases where the suspects hold senior positions in the department. One of the respondents claimed that “personally I have information concerning a staff member in this department who has been engaging in corruption, but I cannot give the information as I can get victimized”. This highlights how the leadership of the department and the organization has failed.

Mutual Trust

The findings of this study indicate that the leadership of the finance departments and staff members do not trust each other. As a result, the leaders as supervisors are closely monitoring what the employees are doing. However, since the department has many employees, it is difficult for supervisors to pay close attention to what each employee is doing. This gives an opportunity to some employees to engage in unethical practices. One of the participants said; “employees do not believe that their seniors will protect them once they give details about an unethical behavior. In addition, they are hesitant to do so because they will gain nothing from doing so”. This clearly shows lack of mutual trust has negative impacts on whistle blowing in the organization.

Social Welfare

The participants indicated that the organization has lost a lot of financial resources and profitability as a result of unethical practices. These resources could have been used to improve the welfare of the society. However, it is not possible for these to be achieved as whistleblowers who should report malpractices in the department are not well protected. The finance department has not developed any strategies to help provide whistleblowers incentives and protection. One of the respondents claimed that “some people holding senior position in this department engage in unethical practices and as a result do not want to promote policies that support whistleblower incentives and protection”. It is difficult to achieve social justice without providing whistle blower incentives and protection.

Qualitative analysis and results

From the responses provided by the participants, finance departments do not provide adequate incentives and protection for whistleblowers. This makes it difficult for them to reports employees who engage in corruptions and other unethical behaviors. Some employees indicated that they had critical information concerning unethical behaviors in the department. However, they would not disclose it because they are afraid of being victimized. The responses also indicate that the management does not provide whistleblower incentives and protection because some of managers are involved in unethical practices.

Analysis and results for Triangulation

Interpretivist was the method of triangulation that was used in this study. Since data was obtain from interview and questionnaires, two analyses were conducted. The first analysis was based on the exiting theoretical information that is available for reviews while the second analysis was conducted to deduce crucial information from the interviews and the specific case study. After conducting triangulations, it was observed that the responses obtained through interviews were consistent with those obtained from questionnaires.

Relationship to Findings

The Research questions

RQ1

The findings of this study indicate that whistleblowers play a crucial role of exposing corruption and other unethical practices within organizations. Failure to provide adequate whistleblowers incentives and protection makes it difficult for them to assume their roles and this result in increased unethical practices in the organization.

RQ2

The findings of this study are closely related to this research question as they indicate the various types of incentive including financial incentives and protection. The findings therefore attempt to answer this question and provide insights to area that the organization needs to improve to reduce unethical practices in the finance department.

RQ3

The findings have indicated that the reasons as to why the organization and particularly the finance department does not provide adequate whistleblowers incentives and protection is because some of the senior individuals engage in unethical behaviors. As a result, they discourage whistleblowers from exposing these activities.

RQ4

The findings of the study are closely related to this research question because they provide insights on the impacts of Whistleblower legislations in the organization. The organization has inadequate whistleblower legislations that have not been reviewed for a long period of time. However, the problem is mainly in the implementation because there is no framework to ensure whistleblowers are protected and compensated.

The Research Framework

The problem being addressed in this study is the lack of adequate whistleblower incentives in the financial department resulting in increase of unethical practices. The findings of the study are closely related to this problem because they highlight the causes of inadequate whistleblower incentives and outline the roles that whistleblowers should play in curbing these practices. The purpose of this study was to strategies that can be utilized to implement incentives and protection laws in finance departments. The findings of the study have explored some of the strategies that finance departments in the banking sector can adopt to minimize the impacts of unethical behaviors.

Anticipated Themes

The anticipated themes for this study have been clearly reflected in the findings. Three themes including ethical leadership, mutual trust, and social welfare were anticipated before the start of the study. All these themes have been discovered in the findings. The responses provided by the participants linked the lack of adequate whistleblower incentives and protection to unethical leadership. Similarly, lack of mutual trust has been found to be a key factor in the failure of the organization to provide whistleblower incentives and protection. On the other hand, the findings indicated that poor reporting of corruption in the finance department promotes unethical behaviors that result in the theme of social welfare. There are no new themes that emerged during the study.

Literature

The findings of this study are closely related with the literature. In the literature sections, previous studies indicated that mutual trust and poor leadership are the factors that affect whistleblowing. The findings of these study have validated these suggestions by coming up with detailed explanations from the responses of the study participants. Various other concepts introduced in the literature section have been validated by the findings.

Summary of the Findings

In summary, the findings of this study indicate that whistleblowers fail to report corruption and other unethical practices in the finance department because of the lack of whistleblower incentives and protection. Whistleblowers play a significant role in address unethical behaviors in the finance department by exposing such scandals. The findings also indicate incentives and protection encourage whistle blowing among staff members in the finance department. The finance department in Bank ABC has failed to provide these incentives and protection to whistleblowers because senior individuals in the department are involved in unethical behaviors.