Whistleblowing in the Singapore Army : design culture motivation

Abstract

Whistleblowing is a common topic in management studies of public and private sectors but the army has seldom been examined for its whistleblowing policy. For a whistleblower to be of existence, there are two important stimulants: design and culture.

Firstly, a well-designed whistleblowing policy emboldens the witness through accessible channels of feedback, transparency in the procedures for handling a complaint, and the protection of whistleblowers. With this structure, the working environment should develop a culture of openness through the influences of organization leaders.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted on current servicemen in the army of the Singapore Armed Forces to unfold the servicemen’s perception and motivations towards the act of whistleblowing and attempts to identify the correlation between design, culture, and motivation.

The study found significant evidence of the causal factors leading to the willingness of whistleblowing, but have not identified the strong influence between design and culture.

Keywords: Whistle-blowing, Motivation, Army, Design, Chain-of-command