Signalling Trustworthiness of Internal Whistleblowing Channels in Organizations: Temporality matters!

Internal whistleblowing and trust

Whistleblowers detect serious economic crimes more successfully than other audit methods (ACFE, 2022). There is also evidence that whistleblowing best serves organizations when fraud is reported internally (Miceli, Near, Rehg & Van Scotter, 2012). This can stop or correct wrongdoing in organizations as early as possible, which is in the interest of organizations and society (Miceli & Near, 2009; Near & Miceli, 2016). Temporality has emerged as a critical dimension in whistleblowing scholarship in recent years. Whether internal, external, or both, whistleblowing comprises a protracted process including multiple stages spread over long periods rather than a single moment of decision making (Brown, 2008; Kenny, 2015; Kenny, Fotaki & Vandekerckhove, 2020; Rothschild & Miethe, 1999; Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019). Furthermore, internal whistleblowing almost always precedes going externally to a regulator or journalist (Brown, 2008; Miceli, Near & Dworkin, 2008).

A decisive factor for internal whistleblowers to escalate their whistleblowing to external recipients such as regulators or the media appears to be the actual or anticipated responses which whistleblowers receive when they raise their concerns informally with their line manager (Rothschild & Miethe, 1999). Potential whistleblowers watch out for signs that the organization is taking previous organizational members’ attempts to speak up seriously (Kenny et al., 2019). People’s early experiences of speaking up influence how whistleblowing tends to unfold, including if and when it escalates (Fotaki & Kenny, 2015; Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019). Therefore, recursive feedback loops play a crucial role at different stages and throughout the process since the expected response by management to a potential whistleblowing action influences decisions to disclose (Kenny, Vandekerckhove, & Irfan, 2020).

The whistleblowing literature has hardly paid any attention to those who operate internal whistleblowing procedures. Researchers such as Fanchini (2019) examined what persuades external recipients like journalists or law enforcement officers to recognize someone as a whistleblower, while Smaili et al. (2023) use principal–agent theory to describe how compliance officers can be caught in-between conflicting expectations of the whistleblower and of top management. Handling whistleblowing reports comprises various tasks, including triaging disclosures, conducting training, initiating investigations, addressing wrongdoing, recommending sanctions to wrongdoers, reviewing cases and suggesting protection measures (Kenny et al., 2019). This sequence is known as the whistleblowing process.

Retaining a potential whistleblower’s trust in organizational internal whistleblowing channels throughout this process often proves difficult. Because of legal limitations on what can be communicated, some decisions in the handling process are withheld from whistleblowers or substantially delayed, which can affect the trustworthiness of organizational processes. Organizations may also compete with regulators for the whistleblower’s information, with trustworthiness being an essential currency in this struggle. For instance, the recent change introduced via the US SEC reward programs compensating whistleblowers for harm due to disclosures (Butler, Serra & Spagnolo, 2020; Nyreröd & Spagnolo, 2021) could incentivize whistleblowing externally. To prevent the whistleblower from turning away from the organization, the organization needs to gain their trust and effectively guard that trust throughout the process. This constitutes the temporal tension involved in trustworthiness.

Furthermore, the emerging whistleblowing research indicates that there are members within the organization who have to broker internal whistleblowing channels and balance them across internal stakeholders. For instance, Du Plessis (2022) uses a Foucauldian lens to analyse internal whistleblowing channels as a management technique. He finds at least three ‘distinct dispositional potentials’ (dispositives) concurrently at play, namely a discipline-and-control dispositive, a security dispositive and a dialogue dispositive. Du Plessis (2022) argues that this interplay of dispositives causes ambiguity, even within stakeholder groups such as unions, accountants, production workers and managers. Compliance officers, as operators of internal whistleblowing channels, face two opposite sets of demands and success criteria (Smaili et al., 2023), as both whistleblowers and board members delegate responsibility to the compliance officer for handling the whistleblower report. However, for the whistleblower, handling the disclosure well implies pulling out all the stops and doing whatever it takes to stop the wrongdoing while, for the board, it means resolving the matter swiftly with little to no disruptions.

Adequate organizational whistleblowing channels in public institutions and private companies are needed to encourage employees to speak up through channels that allow organizations to respond to those concerns. There is an acknowledgement in the literature that successful internal whistleblowing not only protects whistleblowers from retaliation but also enhances capacity to deal with wrongdoing (e.g. Brown et al., 2014; Vandekerckhove, Brown & Tsahuridu, 2014). Workers believing that their whistleblowing will be effective in stopping wrongdoing are more likely to raise a concern (Culiberg & Mihelič, 2016; Hennequin, 2020). Here, IWRs play a key role because they coordinate the whistleblowing process. The European Whistleblowing Directive (EU Dir 2019/1937, Art 9.1c) obliges organizations of 50 or more workers to have such a designated role. The role is often combined with the function of compliance officer, ethics officer, human resources manager, or with a specific technical expertise such as a medical director. Since whistleblowing is a ‘disclosure [. . .] to persons or organizations that may be able to effect action’ (Near & Miceli, 1985, p. 4), this implies that the discloser cannot address the wrongdoing him- or herself and is trusting that the recipient does. In other words, the whistleblower expects the IWR to stop the wrongdoing.

This is by no means straightforward. Trust always involves ‘emotionally enabled leaps of faith’ (Möllering, 2013, p. 291), yet it is critical in whistleblowing situations. The IWR coordinates the handling of the whistleblowing report, about which various internal stakeholders can have differing expectations. Anechiarico and Jacobs (1996) point out that investigations can easily paralyse departments for long periods. Hence, managers will expect investigations to be carried out in a non-intrusive way, e.g. without suspending key staff involved or suspending disciplinary decisions of a manager towards a worker raising concern which makes them anxious (Feldman & Eichental, 2014, p. 41). Whistleblowers will expect the IWR to keep their identity confidential while taking swift action. Alleged wrongdoers will also expect the investigators to hear and believe their side of the story. Thus, the trustworthiness of the internal whistleblowing channel is not simply a matter of dyadic trust between the IWR and the whistleblower. Instead, whistleblowing can involve multiple actors (including the whistleblower, the alleged wrongdoer(s), the whistleblower’s line manager and top management) and levels (including individual and organizational). Establishing trust in the internal whistleblowing channels means that IWRs need to convince each stakeholder of its trustworthiness by effectively balancing their anticipations and handling projections from previous experiences. This synchronic tension compounds the temporal one discussed above, adding another layer of complexity to IWR’s job of signalling trustworthiness, to which we turn next.

Signalling trustworthiness

Hardin (2002, p. 34) wrote: ‘Making oneself trustworthy is convincing the trustor of one’s commitment to fulfil the trustor’s trust.’ How do operators of whistleblowing channels (IWRs) do this, and what difficulties do they face? Our research findings shed light on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness through a sequence of interactions with multiple trustors. We provide a brief overview of signalling and trustworthiness to situate our research within these literatures. Specifically, we focus on signalling theory, which was particularly useful in understanding and articulating the difficulties and uncertainties IWRs experience in making internal whistleblowing channels trustworthy.

Individual trust is about a person’s (trustee’s) degree of willingness to be vulnerable (Colquitt & Rodell, 2011) based on positive expectation concerning other individuals, organizations or institutions. Thus, you can lack trust in your manager but have trust in the organization, or vice versa. To explain this, Hardin (2002) notes that attention should be paid to an antecedent of trust, namely trustworthiness. Simply put, you trust me if you attribute trustworthiness to me (Boersma, Buckley & Ghauri, 2003; Carter, 2022). It is in that sense that trustworthiness is a property that one can attempt to gain by signalling their trustworthiness to others. In other words, trustworthiness is not an inherent quality of an individual to be signalled to others but an attribute they retrospectively gain through effective signalling of trustworthiness. This makes signalling a necessary condition of becoming trustworthy and therefore crucial to study and theorize to advance our understanding of trust. We studied IWRs as the individuals who try to make an organizational process trustworthy (i.e. the internal whistleblowing channel). Bacharach and Gambetta (2001) argue in a series of rational choice hypothetical experiments that trust is not a result of repeated interactions per se but rather ‘the product of underlying trustworthy-making character features’ (p. 150). In that sense, IWRs need to be able to go from sending signals of trustworthiness to sending trustworthy signals.

We recognize that signalling may not be sufficient to elicit trust and make no claims about how successful the IWRs’ attempts to signal trustworthiness are in actually getting others to trust the internal whistleblowing channel. The individual signalling trust may not succeed in getting others to attribute trustworthiness to themselves or to the channels. Understanding the reasons for that failure is as valuable as understanding the reasons for success. The central question guiding our research is, how do IWRs signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels and what challenges do they face in doing so? Our unit of analysis is the IWR, and our study focuses on how they attempt to signal the trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels vis-a-vis other stakeholders within the organization. Emerging from our abductive analysis, the article draws on the pioneering research of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) and its further development by Pirson and Malhotra (2011) to theorize how the IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels to potential trustors.

Mayer et al. (1995) distinguish three key dimensions of trustworthiness in their ABI-model (ability, benevolence and integrity): (1) attribution of ability: the trustor believes the trustee has the required competence to do what the trustor trusts them to do; (2) attribution of benevolence: the trustor believes the trustee has good intentions, i.e. will not take advantage and will be concerned with the trustor’s well-being; (3) attribution of integrity: the trustor believes that the trustee acts according to a set of principles that the trustor finds acceptable. To these three, Pirson and Malhotra (2011) added two further dimensions: (4) attribution of transparency: the trustor believes that the trustee is willing to share trust-relevant information with the trustor; and (5) attribution of identification: the trustor believes that they hold shared values and commitments with the trustee and understands the interests and intentions of the trustee. While both integrity and identification entail that the trustor believes the trustee acts according to a set of principles, identification differs from integrity in that it further entails that the trustor also believes that the trustor and trustee share the internalized values underlying these principles. We have found Pirson and Malhotra’s (2011) expansion of Mayer et al.’s (1995) ABI model helpful in analysing our data. Their work further shows that internal and external stakeholders differ in which attributions of trustworthiness matter most. They find that internal stakeholders seek managerial competence, identification and integrity as trustworthiness attributes in trustee organizations. In contrast, external stakeholders seek technical instead of managerial competence. They also demonstrate that stakeholders who interact frequently with the organization, i.e. customers (external) and employees (internal), value benevolence as a trustworthiness attribute, whereas low-frequency stakeholders, i.e. suppliers (external) and investors (internal), value transparency. However, we know little about situations where a single trustee has to convince multiple trustors of their trustworthiness, and how these attributes might interact over time. Our research addresses these questions by linking signalling trustworthiness to temporality.

Signalling theory finds its origins in the work of Spence (1973) on how job candidates use education to signal their quality to recruiters in an attempt to reduce information asymmetries. Today, there is a vast literature that uses signalling theory, also within management and organization studies, encompassing different levels of analysis. Strategy scholars often explore firm-level signallers of quality through retaining debt (Ross, 1977), issuing dividends (Bhattacharya, 1979), or highlighting a CEO’s background and financial statements (Zhang & Wiersema, 2009). The marketing literature has examined product signals (e.g. Gammoh, Voss & Chakraborty, 2006). Individual signallers have been studied in HR, OB and entrepreneurship studies (e.g. Chandler, Waddingham & Wolfe, 2024; Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005; Ramaswami, Dreher, Bretz & Wiethoff, 2010). Previous scholarship has also integrated signalling concepts with other theories. For example, Miller and Triana (2009) combine signalling theory with behavioural theory of the firm to understand how directors signal diversity to organizational stakeholders. Ryan, Sacco, McFarland and Kriska (2000) integrate signalling with image and expectancy theory to examine what signals police departments send out to police applicants in the hiring process. To our knowledge, signalling theory has not yet been used in the context of whistleblowing. In our study, we combine signalling theory with trustworthiness scholarship to provide insight on how IWRs attempt to convey to stakeholders within the organization that the whistleblowing channels are trustworthy, and what challenges IWRs face in doing so.

Signalling theory ‘focuses mainly on actions insiders take to intentionally communicate positive, imperceptible qualities of the insider’ (Connelly et al., 2011, p.45). Signals are information cues that are observable and are intended to communicate the presence of an unobservable quality. In our research on how IWRs signal trustworthiness, we look at the information cues IWRs send to convince others that the whistleblowing channel and the handling process are competent, benevolent, transparent and have integrity. We also follow Hardin’s (2002) constitutive dimensions of trustworthiness as a dispositional quality, which help examine various ways a trustee signals trustworthiness.

With regard to temporality, previous trust research (Fotaki, 2014; Möllering, 2013; Nooteboom, 1996; Pirson & Malhotra, 2011; Seifert, Sweeney, Joireman & Thornton, 2010) assumes that repeated signalling of trustworthiness happens in sequences of identical interactions. Early trust research tended to approach temporality linearly (Nooteboom, 1996). For example, Nooteboom’s (1996) initial work on trust asserted that previous interactions are vital information on which subsequent trust attributions depend. Seifert et al. (2010) find that the frequency of interaction positively impacts trustworthiness. Yet, more recent trust research has started to emphasize non-linearity. For Möllering (2013), trust is processual and continuously (re)produced, while positive trust experiences enhance the trustor’s well-being. Fotaki, Kenny and Scriver (2015) show that successive failing trusting experiences adversely impact the mental health of whistleblowers. In our research, the occurrence of a whistleblower report is but a first instance of the handling process, which consists of a sequence of situations in which IWRs need to convince internal stakeholders of the trustworthiness of the whistleblowing channel.

The IWR is the signaller and the other internal stakeholders (trustors) are receivers. The usefulness of signalling theory lies in the factors that determine which signal the signaller selects to send and how difficult it might be for the receiver to interpret the signal. One such factor is signal consistency or congruence. Connelly et al. (2011, p.52) define signal consistency as the ‘agreement between signals from one source’. Paruchuri, Han and Prakash (2021) note that the prevailing assumption in signalling research is that incongruence occurs within the same evaluative dimension, e.g. differences in how ability is signalled differently to managers than to workers. Specifically, they demonstrate how signal receivers such as top management, middle managers and workers might process positive and negative signalling of ability and integrity differently. Seele and Gatti (2017) assert that signalling theory claims signal senders can always choose whether or not to signal their true quality. Hence, signalling theory seems dependent on flawed assumptions about signal congruence. Instead, our study demonstrates what occurs when congruency appears weak because it is, ultimately, impossible. We focus on IWRs as signal senders of internal whistleblowing channels. The IWRs perceived these channels as having different meanings and implications for stakeholders, yet trustworthiness had to be signalled to each. Our study suggests that this contradiction has to do with the signal that has to be made rather than the need (and the impossibility) to correct it.

With regard to temporality, Taj (2016) noted that signal sequence is understudied in signalling scholarship. Studying communication within a multinational from HQ to local employees, Taj (2016) demonstrates that negative signalling affects signal interpretation and can result in unintended signalling. Our research also looks at signalling across a sequence of situations, but our focus is on signal senders who are not at the top of the hierarchy.

Makarius, Stevens and Tenhiälä (2017) use signalling theory to argue how a favourable firm reputation can both reduce as well as increase voluntary turnover intentions, depending on the signalling environment. In our research, the signalling environment is characterized by multiple receivers. Hence, understanding how they signal can be achieved by exploring what signals IWRs believe they can and need to signal so that their internal stakeholders would trust the internal whistleblowing channels. Hence, IWRs’ beliefs about signal congruency are important in our research.

Signalling trustworthiness by IWRs is essential for establishing trust and the uptake of whistleblowing channels in organizations. In this process, IWRs are single trustees who must convince multiple internal trustors of the trustworthiness of raising and handling concerns. Different trustors prioritize different attributes – ability, benevolence, integrity, transparency and identification – which are fluid and dynamic. Therefore, IWRs are expected to reconcile conflicting expectations over time, as discussed above. Our article examines explicitly how they respond to these expectations.

Sample and data collection

Our explicit research focus is on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels. Highlighting the experiences of IWRs, an under-researched group, we depart from prior empirical research that is largely focused on whistleblowers. We collected primary interview data from four organizations known for having established whistleblowing channels in place for some time. We aimed to examine best practices, hence we drew on our contacts to gain access to exemplar organizations across a range of sectors, including a hospital (UK National Health Service Trust), an engineering multinational, a bank with offices in Western Europe and the US, and a central government agency in Southeast Asia.

On one level, our empirical settings differed. For example, the four organizations had different structures; thus, the IWRs were positioned differently within their organizations. The engineering company and the bank had central and regional IWRs, spread across different countries. In the engineering company, the IWR functions were part of the compliance function. The bank, however, was in the process of switching the IWR from compliance to HR. In the hospital and the government agency, the IWR team comprised fewer people but these were restricted to a single country, whereas in the bank and the engineering company IWRs were present in more than one country. The government agency IWR consisted of auditing professionals, whereas in the hospital, the IWR function was adjacent to that of the HR director and the clinical director. The four organizations also differed in how long they had been running their internal whistleblowing system. At the time of the interviews, the engineering company had its system for seven years, the bank for four years, the hospital for three years and the government agency for nearly two years.

These differences notwithstanding, we found key similarities across research sites. While the contexts differ, the role and constitutive tasks of IWRs were similar in all organizations, ranging from training to coordination as set out above. Relatedly, while our data was gathered in 2016, the core principles under examination – i.e. the constitutive dynamics of trustworthiness as part of the experiences of an IWR – are not specific to a particular period in time and thus remain relevant to practice today. IWRs today share the same responsibilities, challenges and opportunities as our participants. We are conscious that in the interim years, whistleblowing channels have become more prevalent in certain countries and sectors. Yet despite new policies and legislations, in many organizations, implementing such channels remains a relatively new practice and they face similar challenges to the ones we have researched. This field of practice is still emerging and therefore lessons can be learned from the experiences of our research participants.

We snowballed our sample from a small number of existing contacts within the author team with IWRs inside these four organizations and among the outsourced IWRs. We interviewed 23 IWRs within the four organizations, five interviewees who perform outsourced IWR functions or advise organizations on how to operate whistleblowing channels, and two regulators (n = 30). The IWRs in the four organizations had diverse job titles, including compliance officer, HR manager, HR director, legal counsel, investigator and auditor, but shared the core responsibilities of this role as depicted above. The outsourced IWR interviewees included a speak-up consultant, a hotline operator, an ombudsman, an independent advice line operator and a law firm partner. We provide details on our sample in Table 1, using pseudonyms for our interviewees.

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Table 1.

Overview of interviewees.

#	Pseudonym	Gender	Organization	Function
1	Esther	F	Bank	HR manager
2	Nataliya	F	Bank	Operational lead for speak-up
3	Dave	M	Bank	Investigator
4	Lefteros	M	Bank	Operational risk manager
5	Beatrice	F	Bank	Policy lead for speak-up
6	Jessica	F	Bank	Head of HR
7	Phil	M	Bank	Head of compliance
8	Fiona	F	Hospital	CEO
9	Mike	M	Hospital	HR director
10	Albert	M	Hospital	Clinical director
11	Peter	M	Engineering	Head of compliance
12	Mohammed	M	Engineering	General counsel
13	Michael	M	Engineering	Compliance North Europe
14	Hannah	F	Engineering	HR lead for speak-up
15	Jose	M	Engineering	Compliance Latin America
16	Christian	M	Engineering	Compliance Africa
17	Jeff	M	Engineering	Compliance USA
18	Jasmine	F	Government	Secretary
19	Pedro	M	Government	Head of administration
20	Keith	M	Government	Head of legal
21	Melanie	F	Government	Manager regulation development
22	George	M	Government	Head of system and procedure
23	Ivan	M	Government	Senior auditor
24	Sara	F	Outsourced IWR	Trainers speak-up culture
25	Tony	M	Outsourced IWR	Corporate ombudsman
26	James	M	Experts	Regulator
27	David	M	Experts	Regulator
28	Marianne	F	Outsourced IWR	Civil society organization
29	Imke	F	Outsourced IWR	Hotline provider
30	Rana	F	Outsourced IWR	Lawyer

We conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews between November 2015 and January 2016, lasting between 40 and 90 minutes. Questions initially focused on the design, implementation and communication of the internal whistleblowing arrangement, alongside people’s experiences of operating the processes, and of furthering whistleblowers’ concerns within the organization. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. We anonymized participants’ names during the process, replacing them with codes, and used general terms when referring to organizations instead of brand names or specific whistleblowing channels.

Analysis

We used an abductive approach to data analysis, allowing for creative production of hypotheses and novel theoretical insights based on surprising evidence (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). Unlike grounded theory, abductive analysis does not claim that observation or arriving at a finding from the data is theory-free. Instead, it demands that the research team has knowledge of multiple theories, and systematically applies iterative rounds of coding and theoretical discussion to facilitate the discovery of surprise in the data. Anomalies lead to the simultaneous generation and narrowing of theoretical leads toward theory extension or generation (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). We also acknowledge that the research team was a priori influenced by their work with whistleblowers, HR and compliance professionals, as well as literatures on identity, gender, relationality, ethics, voice and trust.

In the first preparatory phase, a member of the research team who had not been involved in conducting the interviews coded the interview transcripts. Open in-case coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) enabled the researchers to revisit the phenomenon being studied in the subsequent stages of the analysis, and also allowed everyone in the team to ‘get into’ the data through exploration of a very rich set of themes, regardless of whether they had conducted the interview themselves or not.

In the second phase, we used cross-case comparison (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to identify common threads and themes. This was an iterative process in which each researcher separately reflected on the issues before paired discussion, helped by using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo to render different coding matrixes of what we, at different stages, considered our main themes within the whole set of data codes. Each team member examined relatively small data excerpts and cast these in light of our respective theoretical expertise. The main themes we came to work with at that early stage included ‘trust’, ‘lack of trust’, ‘communication’, ‘power’, ‘emotions’, ‘reasons for not using speak-up procedure’, ‘reasons for using speak-up procedure’. While we were sensitive to gender dynamics, these did not emerge as salient.

In a third phase, we presented preliminary findings in the form of a report and a paper theorizing this coding in terms of how trust was continuously negotiated and re-created throughout the different stages of the whistleblowing process, that comprised raising, investigating and acting upon the outcome of the investigation. We also solicited feedback from key participants in four organizations studied as part of our methodology. In abductive analysis, recursive ‘sharing research among a community of inquiry stimulates the articulation and refinement of theoretical constructs’ (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 179). Our audiences included: (1) compliance and ethics officers hosted by a European forum for ethics officers; (2) representatives of UK whistleblower support groups hosted by one of the authors’ institution; (3) board members of a number of different organizations in the UK hosted by a professional body; (4) academics at an international conference; and (5) people who provide consultancy services to UK organizations on internal whistleblowing. Their feedback helped us to refine our theoretical contribution further. For the compliance and ethics officers, our findings resonated with their experiences; for the whistleblower support groups, our research explained why whistleblowers continue to experience problems despite using internal whistleblowing channels. The academic audience stimulated us to pursue theoretical crystallization by focusing on trustworthiness rather than trust. We had initially worked on descriptive accounts of dilemmas and difficulties the IWRs faced without a specified theory of trust. This helpful suggestion led us to explore the dimensions of trustworthiness developed in the extant literature (Mayer et al., 1995; Pirson & Malhotra, 2011).

A fourth phase was triggered by a further salient moment in the analysis process, when one of the researchers drew attention to an instance in a transcript where the interviewee described one of the challenges of being an IWR as balancing contradicting needs of two stakeholders. It occurred to us that, thus far, we had theorized problems of maintaining and constantly re-creating trust with whistleblowers throughout the whole process (i.e. as a diachronic phenomenon changing over time), mainly informed by the emerging literature on protracted whistleblowing (Vandekerckhove & Phillips, 2019). In the instances where there was an explicit mention of synchronic trust work problems in the data (i.e. signalling trustworthiness to different stakeholders simultaneously), we developed additional themes for our data coding. We thus added a coding layer, identifying both diachronic and synchronic problems in signalling trustworthiness. This allowed us to analyse interactions between the different ways in which IWRs attempted to signal trustworthiness. We had two further opportunities to do recursive sharing of these findings from our final stage of our abductive analysis. We used an invitation from a whistleblowing channel service provider to present and discuss our findings in 2022 with IWRs from Western Europe (mostly compliance officers) and also presented a summary at an open symposium attended by compliance officers and integrity scholars in October 2023. Our analysis resonated well with these audiences and we heard a number of corroborating anecdotes from the IWRs in the audience.

Limitations

Before presenting our findings, we bring attention to some limitations of our study. First, our study focuses on those who signal trustworthiness. It is important to note that we have no data on how these signals are interpreted. What is included in our data however is the senders’ perceptions of how their signalling is interpreted.

A second limitation is that we collected our data across four different organizations. This was a deliberate choice as we set out to see commonalities about a similar phenomenon in different contexts. However, it is possible that this research design blurs some insights specific to sector or region.

A third possible limitation is that our data was collected in 2016, which is some years prior to this final reiteration of our article. However, we have grounds to believe that our insights are still valid. One such reason is that we selected organizations which we believed were ahead of others in implementing whistleblowing channels, and thus many more organizations would now be where our sample organizations were in 2016. A corroborating reason for this is our presentation of our findings to practitioner audiences in 2022 and 2023, which resonated well with their experiences at that time.

We present the findings on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels next.

Synchronic tensions

Synchronic tensions relate to how an IWR might signal trustworthiness simultaneously to different stakeholders to generate trust. Our analysis suggests that signalling a particular trustworthiness attribute to one stakeholder can contradict the signalling of the same or another trustworthiness attribute to another stakeholder. The implication is that the challenges IWRs face to be perceived as operating trustworthy organizational whistleblowing channels stem partially from the different stakeholder expectations they need to cater for simultaneously. We present these different synchronic tensions in turn.

Diachronic tensions

Tensions around the signalling of trustworthiness attributes do not only occur when the IWR feels compelled to simultaneously cater to different stakeholder expectations. Our analysis also indicated tensions and contradictions in signalling trustworthiness to the same stakeholder at different stages in the whistleblowing process, i.e. diachronic tensions. Hence, besides synchronic tensions, there are also diachronic tensions. Our data includes instances where IWRs appeared to be signalling trustworthiness in self-defeating ways. More precisely, IWRs thought the credibility of their signalling was negatively affected by their inconsistent signalling over time in a sequence of different situations. One such sequence was promising confidentiality when whistleblowing, and then maintaining confidentiality during investigation and further judicial steps. Another sequence was starting with communication but later on facing legal restrictions on transparency, stopping them from sharing details of investigation outcomes and sanctions against wrongdoers. We present these findings now.

Impossibility of transparency

A second diachronic tension we found relates to IWRs struggling with a lack of transparency. Trustworthiness based on an attribution of transparency would occur when the IWR shares information that is relevant to the trustor (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011). We coded this a number of times in our data, but always in combination with an expression of difficulty. IWRs were not able to share information with the whistleblower about the outcome of the handling process, i.e. the findings of the investigations and the sanctions taken against the wrongdoer. IWRs perceived this as impeding their trustworthiness.

Most of these difficulties stem from legal restraints on communicating details of the outcome of an investigation to the whistleblower.

So, we always say, ‘Thank you very much for your report. We are going to investigate it thoroughly, and we will do whatever is necessary.’ We do not say whether it’s correct or it’s not correct, and we do not say what we do afterwards, because the law doesn’t allow it. (Hannah, HR lead for speak-up, engineering)

Effectively, all we can do is say, ‘We are considering taking some action,’ but we’re not specific and we never tell them we have, or we haven’t. (Imke, hotline provider, outsourced IWR)

Obviously if the activity that has been complained about were to continue then that would be evidence that it hasn’t been dealt with properly. But you would hope that the issue that’s been raised is stopped. But you won’t get detail about what action has been taken against an individual, or where there is something of substance that’s been investigated and found to be true. (Beatrice, policy lead for speak-up, bank)

These quotes illustrate that IWRs struggle to signal trustworthiness when rounding off the whistleblowing process. To achieve this, they would need to signal transparency, by explaining how they investigated the concern and divulging what was found. Data protection and privacy regulation prevent them from doing so. Instead, they can only communicate a message of thanks for raising a concern, which is vague on details. Internal investigations can take many months and if there has been no communication with the whistleblower between the making of the whistleblowing report and the closing of the case, this silence makes the signalling even more difficult.

Not all wrongdoing warrants the wrongdoer’s dismissal after an investigation, and some of the concerns whistleblowers raise could be mistaken. In these cases, feedback is unlikely and it will not be apparent to whistleblowers that their internal whistleblowing has been taken seriously. The IWRs we interviewed saw this as a significant challenge to achieving closure on the whistleblower’s claim while maintaining their trust in the organization.

[. . .] people usually imagine the compliance officer can do whatever they want, and it is not like that. (Jose, compliance Latin America, engineering)

This interviewee indicated that the IWR’s ‘have their hands tied’ in terms of what they can achieve. It’s important to note that the lack of transparency at the end of the process undercuts the earlier signalling of ability, benevolence, or integrity. As an IWR explains:

We talk about it being confidential, we talk about it being safe. And the fact that it is safe, when an employee goes through it, nobody hears about it. So, get it wrong, everyone knows; get it right, no one knows. (Nataliya, operational lead for speak-up, bank)

The IWR mentions a lack of transparency here, that stems not so much from a legal constraint but rather from the handling process itself. When a whistleblower report is handled well, the whistleblower’s identity will remain confidential and they will not experience retaliation. The whistleblower themself will know this but it cannot be communicated to others as a signal of trustworthiness of the whistleblowing channel.

We summarize our findings in Table 2. Synchronous tensions involve either contradictory signalling of trustworthiness attributions to different stakeholders, or signalling to one stakeholder precluding signalling trustworthiness to another stakeholder. These tensions stem from different expectations stakeholders have, which are related to their specific position and roles within the organization. As such, it may be impossible to fully resolve synchronic tensions. Nevertheless, these tensions might be lessened if signalling trustworthiness can also happen through identification attributions.

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Table 2.

Synchronic and diachronic tensions: summary of findings.

Synchronic tensions
Ability	Stakeholders expect contradicting abilities
Benevolence	Benevolence contradicts ability Impossible to be benevolent to both sides
Integrity	Integrity (commitment to principles) precludes benevolence
Identification	Possibly lessens tensions; shared belief is that we all want to resolve problems. Identification-based trust might help to smooth over tensions
Diachronic tensions
Confidentiality (as benevolence) Confidentiality (as integrity)	Promising confidentiality at beginning cannot be sustained throughout the handling process
(Lack of) transparency	Lack of transparency at the end of the handling process because no details of investigation can be communicated. This undermines all the previous trustworthiness

Diachronic tensions stem from the signal sender’s mistake in choosing the reference point from which to signal trustworthiness. Our data suggests that IWRs saw no other option than to over-signal at the beginning. This was at least the case with their signalling around confidentiality. Speculating in terms of signalling theory, one could assert that there is deliberate false signalling here by IWRs, for example, in the way they word the promise of confidentiality in the whistleblowing policy or when they offer secret meetings outside the organization’s premises. They do this knowing that at the end of the process they will be unable to signal transparency attributions, which also undermines their signalling from the beginning. The IWRs understood very well that this unsustainable signalling hurt the trustworthiness of the internal whistleblowing channels. However, they did not propose any solution, for example, making weaker but more frequent claims about confidentiality.

We can discuss IWRs’ lack of transparency signalling in light of signal sequence (Taj, 2016). Our findings suggest that even when senders are aware of signal inconsistency over time, they do not always know how to compensate for that in their earlier signalling. We focused on how the IWRs see themselves as trying to make whistleblowing channels trustworthy, and what IWRs believe their weak spot is. They identified the impossibility to be transparent about the outcome of an investigation or sanctions taken against a wrongdoer as the most important obstacle in achieving this. We posit that these diachronic tensions can be resolved to the extent that signalling is teleological, i.e. the end of the process – or the final interaction in a foreseen sequence – is taken as the reference point for signalling trustworthiness throughout the process, and thus also at the beginning.

We argue – in contrast to assumptions within signalling theory – that teleological signalling will best encompass an understanding and communication of the inevitable ambiguity and multiplicity of these systems when viewed from multiple perspectives. We expand upon this in the next section.

Signalling trustworthiness in new contexts

Our research focus was on how IWRs attempt to signal trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels. Our insights help to better understand attempts to generate trust in the context of new organizational practices and technologies. The synchronic tensions that emerged from our data indicate that IWRs send out quite diverse signals. On first glance, read through prevailing signalling theory assumptions, this suggests their signalling congruency is weak. However, on closer examination of our complex case, what appears as weak congruency actually relates to the underlying ambiguity and impossibility of signalling the complexity of the system. The implication for signalling theory is that IWRs, as signal senders, may feel compelled to ‘defeat’ the distortion in their signalling environment. However, our research offers insights that incongruent signal sets, from the signal senders’ point of view, may require an acceptance of and a communication of complexity and ambiguity to stakeholders involved in the process, an important yet neglected aspect inherent to signalling trustworthiness that our study highlighted, of the reality studied through signalling theory.

In particular, the signal incongruency amounted to portraying whistleblowing channels as having different purposes. For example, as mechanisms to address employee concerns, we identified instances of contradictory signalling inbuilt in the system. Weak signal congruency did not appear to be a deliberate strategy of our interviewees. While IWRs believed they had an understanding of what signals the different stakeholders were expecting, they did not know how to manage these expectations. Thus, theorizing from a signal sender’s point of view, our research suggests that weak signal congruency may result from a signal sender’s response to various organizational stakeholders’ needs. This requires IWRs to communicate about the complexity and impossibility of congruent signalling, rather than reducing distortion in their signalling environment. We speculated that such communication could be achieved through the signalling of identification and teleological signalling.

We must consider that operating whistleblowing channels is a relatively new practice. There is still little attention to IWR functions in professional training, and stakeholders are anxious about the implications of whistleblowing channels for their own roles (e.g. IWRs’ assertion that middle management takes it personally). Hence, with regard to trust in new organizational practices or technologies, our research suggests that it is essential to consider the challenges faced by those who need to convey trustworthiness to stakeholders. Research on signalling as well as trust scholarship mostly focuses on more established organizational practices and technologies, such as marketing products to customers or communicating to investors. It is therefore a contribution of our research to provide insight into the difficulties of signalling trustworthiness of new organizational practices. We theorize these tensions as arising on the one hand from signalling trustworthiness to different stakeholders at the same time (synchronic tensions), and on the other hand signalling trustworthiness to the same stakeholder over time (diachronic tensions). Our insights highlight a persistent challenge for IWRs – how to establish themselves as credible signallers of the trustworthiness of whistleblowing channels. This issue, we speculate, could be less problematic if accompanied by identification-based trustworthiness. While some of our IWRs were hopeful in this regard, none had a clear strategy for achieving it.

Temporality

We believe our findings involving temporality point to a complexity that is not addressed in trustworthiness literature. We explored how IWRs attempt to make internal whistleblowing channels trustworthy, and our findings suggest that ability-trustworthiness can be trustor-specific. IWRs simultaneously signal different and often contradicting abilities to different trustors. The related findings we observed concerned the limited potential for synchronic trustworthiness attributions. Specifically, our findings go beyond previous research (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011) in highlighting synchronic signalling of trustworthiness by a single trustee to multiple trustors and observing that for IWRs the use of specific attributes precludes the signalling of other trustworthiness attributes. In short, it is not easy to signal everything to everyone simultaneously, and this is especially so if complexity and ambiguity are denied or ‘swept under the carpet’ with a fantasy of final signal congruence.

Our findings on diachronic temporality also further trustworthiness scholarship. The whistleblowing process – receiving the concern, investigating and acting upon it and communicating outcomes – entails a sequence of interactions that are characterized by differences in shareable information and, to add a level of complexity, are at least partly determined by previously signalled attributes of trustworthiness. This appeared to make our interviewees feel unable to sustain earlier trustworthiness attributes such as benevolence or integrity, as described earlier. Our interviewees found that this lack of transparency tarnishes the integrity of the whistleblowing channel. In this sense, our research suggests that transparency can moderate other trustworthiness dimensions.

However, since it is beyond the control of IWRs to increase that transparency, it is plausible to assert that some trustworthiness dimensions, such as benevolence and integrity, might not be sustainable throughout the whistleblowing process. IWRs will need to take that into account if they want stakeholders to trust the internal whistleblowing channels. While scholars have focused on the mechanisms of trust and how to ‘make oneself trustworthy’ via the act of convincing a trustor of one’s commitment to their interests (Hardin, 2002, p. 34) or by looking at different personality traits that predict individuals’ trustworthiness (Levine, Bitterly, Cohen & Schweitzer, 2018), our analysis points to something slightly different at play. Specifically, we problematize the stability of trustworthiness and, therefore, the value and perhaps even the ethics inherent to the act of convincing.

Extant understanding of the signalling of trustworthiness indicates that individuals learn about each other’s trustworthiness over time (Six, 2007) while the frequency of interaction between trustee and trustor also impacts trustworthiness (Seifert et al., 2010). This line of research assumes that the constitutive aspects of trust remain the same over time, as do the actors involved. In contrast, we show that in complex organizational settings the constitutive aspects of trust – benevolence, integrity and ability – can be deployed in different ways over time, depending on the perceived needs of trustors. Therefore, our insights highlight trustworthiness’s contingent and political nature, which determines responses to various stakeholders’ needs and interests. Faced with multiple demands emanating from a boundary-spanning role, IWRs might proceed wisely by attempting to communicate about the synchronic and diachronic tensions, thereby establishing identification attributions of trustworthiness. Returning to Boersma et al.’s (2003) conception of actors, one can indeed get someone else to make attributions of trustworthiness by deploying the pliable and contingent constitutive aspects of trustworthiness in specific ways. Through our in-depth analysis of a complex organizational setting in which trustworthiness temporally operates across multiple dimensions, internal tensions emerge that enable us to see the political and power-laden aspects of this concept. More specifically, our findings bring a novel insight concerned with the temporality of this process by suggesting that the continuous (re)production of trust needs to address both synchronic and diachronic tensions which the IWR faces. Thus, it highlights the value of the approach adopted and the setting of whistleblowing for researching these questions.

These findings also provide novel insights into trust as a process. Scholars advocate researching the ‘how’ of trusting to understand trust as a continuous and dynamic process (Möllering, 2013). Thus far, there is very limited research with only a few existing studies finding that trust is not static but has to be continuously (re)produced and is also relational, emerging from micro-level and meso-organizational-level interactions between trustor and trustee (Fotaki, 2014). Möllering (2013) writes that this reproduction is formative not only for individual identification but also for collective identification by stressing the importance of different attributes of trustworthiness operating across levels: ‘trusting signals and confirms an actor’s willingness to belong to a collective’ (p. 294). In this sense, the identification dimension of the would-be whistleblowers vis-a-vis their organization might determine their trust or otherwise in the whistleblowing channels, because the belief that one is part of a collective or that everyone works according to shared values and commitments, moderates signal inconsistencies and distortion in the signalling environment. Critical to this however is the willingness of IWRs, senior managers and all involved to be open and transparent about the ambiguities and complexities of a system such as internal whistleblowing channels. Only then can ideas of identification and mutual understanding as promoted by Pirson and Malhotra (2011) be taken seriously.

Whistleblowing

Our final contribution is to the whistleblowing literature, more precisely by paying attention to those who operate internal whistleblowing procedures. The argument put forward by Smaili et al. (2023) is that compliance officers should put effort in aligning expectations of both sides by ‘educating’ both employees and top managers on their shared interest in due process when handling whistleblower reports. Building on Smaili et al. (2023), who see the need for compliance officers to ‘educate’ stakeholders, our findings suggest that IWRs are unaware of having a mandate to proactively build culture. Instead, the IWRs we interviewed were mainly stuck in their synchronic and diachronic tensions. These tensions seem related to notions of power within the organization, especially synchronic tensions. Our research further complements that of Smaili et al. (2023) by using signalling theory and trustworthiness attributions to provide insights into diachronic tensions IWRs struggle with. It shows that instead of identical cycles of trust building, practical limitations of trustworthiness across different phases determine how one ought to signal trustworthiness at the outset.

Recommendations for practice

Based on these insights we can suggest the following recommendations for practice. First, we believe it can help IWRs to become aware of the tensions in their signalling. This can be done by mapping the various signals sent to different stakeholders about the whistleblowing channels. Acknowledging that not all tensions can be resolved, a further step can be considered in which such a mapping is communicated to the different stakeholders, for example in training, with transparency around complexity and ambiguity. Perhaps this could be seen as a form of ‘educating’ in the sense of Smaili et al. (2023).

Our second recommendation to IWR practitioners is to set different agendas for dealing with synchronic tensions on the one hand and diachronic tensions on the other. It seems to us that while the diachronic tensions seem to be self-inflicted and can be avoided, the synchronic tensions might not be fully resolvable. Synchronic tensions stem from different expectations that internal stakeholders have of whistleblowing channels. It seems to us that such tension can be lessened by creating mutual understanding of each other’s expectations, that workers, middle managers and top management remain distinct positions within an organizational structure, and it is unavoidable that these positions come with different expectations.

Third, one speculation from our research is that identification signalling may be able to reduce synchronic tensions. However, IWRs lacked strategy to achieve this. We recommend IWRs to seek ways to create a shared belief that the whistleblowing channel is underpinned by due process that is well intended towards resolving problems. It might help if other internal stakeholders would also provide such identification signals. Longevity in post, and reinforcing identification through communities of practice external to the organization enabling engagement with other IWRs, will also assist.

Our fourth recommendation for practitioners is to avoid diachronic tensions by refraining from over-signalling, especially in the form of over-promising confidentiality and feedback. It might be difficult to appropriately weigh one’s own signalling and make judgements about over-promising. Still, IWRs could, through their professional bodies, seek to establish communities of practice to help each other with such analyses. Any intermediate signalling of trustworthiness needs to be benchmarked on what confidentiality and transparency can be provided at the end of the handling process, when a whistleblowing case needs to be closed.