Presenting a Whistleblowing Model for Accountants

Today, whistleblowing is an essential mechanism for fraud prevention and detection. This study mainly aims to provide a whistleblowing model for accountants with an emphasis on and combining effective factors. It can be justified by individual and organizational factors. In this context, the most important features were obtained by studying the theoretical foundations, according to which 12 experts were questioned and interviewed. Based on the results, a number of codes were extracted. Then, the proposed model was presented using a factor analysis approach. The results showed an incremental positive effect of personal responsibility, a sense of significance (importance), philosophical attitude, risk-taking, the cultural feature of power distance, a cultural feature of corporate citizenship, organizational commitment, and experiencing similar cases on internal whistleblowing. The results also indicated a decremental negative effect of personal outlays (expenses), occupational or family dependence on offenders (i.e., offender's high influence in the organization), and history of the lax treatment of offenders (i.e., disappointment with the mechanism of handling detected frauds) on internal whistleblowing.