Predicting the Symbolic Use of Ethical Violation Reporting Systems

Call-in hotlines are commonly used by organizations as a way to comply with ethics regulations and expectations from outside constituencies. Such hotlines are perceived to reduce ethical misconduct, and thus adoption is often considered a substantiated action on behalf of the organization in attempt to minimize ethical misconduct. There is the possibility, however, that such hotlines are simply a symbolic gesture made by organizations to eliminate pressures to adhere to certain ethical standards. The current research examines this possibility. Relying upon institutional theory and theories of ethical misconduct, we argue that organizations may adopt ethics hotlines for both substantive and symbolic reasons. Given that the use of hotlines by any one organization can be both substantive and symbolic, we examine several factors associated with reports of ethical misconduct to understand the conditions under which an organization uses a hotline as a symbolic gesture. We explore these questions in a dataset consisting of over 75,000 reports of ethical misconduct. Our results suggest that organizations adopt hotlines for both substantive and symbolic reasons, and that factors related to the person reporting the violation and those involved in the violation affect whether or not the organization responds in a substantive or symbolic way.