Whistleblower Psychological Safety in Hybrid Organizations

Markus Pohlmann

Whistleblower Psychological Safety in Hybrid Organizations

Author(s)	Prof. Dr. Markus Pohlmann
Country	United States
Abstract	Hybrid organizations create distinctive conditions for organizational voice because employees alternate between physically co-located and digitally mediated work environments. Although formal whistleblowing systems may be available to all employees, the willingness to report suspected misconduct depends substantially on whether individuals believe that raising a concern can occur without interpersonal punishment, professional isolation, reputational damage, or managerial retaliation. This study examines whistleblower psychological safety as an organizational condition that influences reporting intention in hybrid workplaces. The paper integrates psychological safety, employee voice, organizational silence, and whistleblowing research to develop a context-sensitive explanation of ethical reporting under distributed work arrangements. Because verified field observations were not available for the present study, a transparent simulation-based quantitative design was adopted rather than presenting synthetic observations as real organizational evidence. A dataset representing 240 hypothetical hybrid employees was generated across five explanatory constructs: psychological safety, managerial openness, reporting-channel accessibility, hybrid inclusion, and fear of retaliation. Whistleblowing intention was modeled as the outcome variable. Descriptive patterns, correlations, quartile comparisons, and multiple regression were used to evaluate the proposed relationships. The simulation indicates that psychological safety has the strongest positive association with whistleblowing intention, while retaliation fear has a substantial negative association. Managerial openness and accessible reporting channels also demonstrate meaningful positive effects. The findings further suggest that formal reporting infrastructure is unlikely to be sufficient when employees anticipate social or career consequences for speaking up. The study contributes a hybrid-work perspective to whistleblowing research by emphasizing the interaction between ethical infrastructure, leadership accessibility, communication equality, and perceived interpersonal risk. Practical implications concern managerial responsiveness, confidential digital reporting, anti-retaliation credibility, equitable access to decision makers, and follow-up communication after concerns are raised.
Keywords	psychological safety; whistleblowing; hybrid organizations; employee voice; organizational silence; retaliation; ethical climate; reporting intention
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 6, Issue 2, March-April 2025
Published On	2025-04-21

View / Download PDF File

About AJAMIR Fees & Payment Current Issue Publication Archive	Submit Research Paper Track Submission Status Publication Guidelines Publication Ethics Peer Review & Plagiarism	Join as a Reviewer Editors & Reviewers Reviewer Referral Program Get Reviewer Membership Certi.	Website/Journal Policies Usage Policy Content Policies Privacy Policy

Contact Us		+1-872-302-3851	editor@ajamir.com

American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Whistleblower Psychological Safety in Hybrid Organizations

Share this