The Deterrence Effects of Whistleblowing Provisions, Corporate Governance Culture, and Machiavellianism

Abstract

Corporate fraud imposes significant costs on stakeholders. Accordingly, firms strive to deter fraud ex ante and detect fraud ex post. Using a sample of experienced business managers, we experimentally examine the degree to which selected whistleblowing incentives provisions and a strong corporate governance culture serve ex ante to deter complicity in fraudulent financial reporting by increasing the perceived likelihood that observed violations will be reported. We find that reward provisions marginally increase perceived risks compared to a control condition, whereas penalty provisions significantly increase perceived risks. We also find that the existence of a stronger (compared to a weaker) corporate governance culture increases perceptions that observed violations will be reported; but greater Machiavellianism leads to diminished perceptions of risk. Additionally, we find that the influence of whistleblowing incentives provisions only manifest among participants low in Machiavellianism. We conclude by discussing the contributions of our research and by suggesting future research. Data Availability: The data are available from the authors upon request.