Audit committee financial expertise, equity compensation and employee whistleblowing

Motivated by the importance of effective oversight in mitigating the risks of employee external whistleblowing, this study investigates the effect of audit committee financial expertise and equity compensation on employee external whistleblowing. Drawing on theories of motivated reasoning and overconfidence, I propose that while audit committee financial expertise could enhance oversight, higher equity compensation can trigger cognitive biases that lead audit committee members to overestimate their monitoring effectiveness and discount or overlook the risks in internal reports of wrongdoing, increasing employee external whistleblowing. Using a sample of U.S. listed firms involved in misconduct, I find that greater audit committee financial expertise is associated with lower levels of employee external whistleblowing when audit committee equity compensation is low, but with higher levels of employee external whistleblowing when equity compensation is high. These findings suggest that audit committee equity compensation may undermine the benefits of financial expertise, offering new insights into the unintended consequences of governance and compensation practices.