Why police officers and labour inspectors (do not) blow the whistle: A grid group cultural theory perspective

The purpose of this paper is to offer and test a theoretical framework that can be used to identify different styles of peer reporting, and explain why police officers and labour inspectors (do not) report peers’ misconduct.

A conceptual framework is developed that identifies underlying mechanisms of peer reporting. It aims to be an alternative for the blue code of silence literature and the general whistleblowing studies, which have a number of disadvantages. This newly developed framework is then tested in a qualitative research project in the police and the labour inspection in a West‐European country.

This paper concludes that, in the four agencies, the individualistic type of keeping silent is often preferred when confronted with colleagues’ misbehaviour, but in exceptional situations respondents decide to report colleagues’ misbehaviour to their boss in a fatalistic or individualistic way. This can probably be explained by the low group (and, thus, fatalistic or individualistic) working context. As for the police, the respondents are “case officers” who are solely responsible for the success of their investigations. As for the labour inspection, the respondents enjoy wide discretion and autonomy in their investigations. In the labour inspections a hierarchical silence code can be found among inspectors with low seniority.

This qualitative study is an exploratory study, aimed at theory‐building by developing hypotheses which need to be tested in future research. It is not aimed at making generalisations to other police agencies or labour inspections.

Grid group cultural theory could inspire practitioners who want to implement whistleblowing policies by recommending that whistleblowing measures, to be effective, should be adapted to organisational characteristics and the prevalent whistleblowing behaviour.

This paper offers a new theoretical framework to analyse and explain peer reporting in the police and other professional groups; not only enriching the police culture literature, but also enabling comparative research.