Title: A study of accountants' whistle-blowing intention: evidence from Iran

Authors: Mohammad Namazi; Fahime Ebrahimi

Addresses: Shiraz University, Shiraz, Postcode 71946-85111, Iran ' Shiraz University, Shiraz, Postcode 71946-85111, Iran

Abstract: The present research is aimed at identifying the most important variables affecting whistle-blowing and prioritise them in the intention of internal reporting of frauds in the financial statements by accountants. For this purpose, the effect of organisational justice, attitude toward whistle-blowing, personal cost of reporting, proactive personality traits, religiosity and moral intensity are studied. This research is based on a survey research and the statistical population of the study consists of the accountants of the 400 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in 2015. The hypotheses were tested using OLS regression and the results indicate that among preceding factors, only organisational justice, attitude toward whistle-blowing, religiosity and moral intensity have positive and significant effects on the intention of reporting fraud. The results of prioritising effective factors of whistle-blowing intentions show that organisational justice, religiosity and then gender have the most impact on the intention to whistle-blow in financial statements.

Keywords: internal whistle-blowing; organisational justice; proactive personality trait; religiosity; moral intensity; accountants in Iran; Iran.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2017.090213

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2017 Vol.12 No.4, pp.349 - 373

Accepted: 15 Dec 2017
Published online: 05 Mar 2018 *

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