An evolutionary game theoretic model of whistleblowing behaviour in organizations

Abstract

Abstract We present a theoretical model of corruption in organizations. Our specific focus is the role of incentives that aim to encourage whistleblowing behaviour. Corruption is modelled as a social norm of behaviour using evolutionary game theory. In particular, the dynamics of whistleblowing behaviour is captured using the replicator dynamics equation with constant and quadratic monitoring costs. We formally explore the local asymptotic stability of the equilibria. Our findings indicate that the traditional recommendations of the Beckerian approach are usually too expensive and/or unstable. We argue that an efficient mechanism for controlling corruption can be achieved by maintaining efficient salaries and imposing high rewards for whistleblowers when they detect wrongdoing. In the long term, employees can only be honest, or corrupt, or corrupt and whistleblowers; honest and whistleblowing behaviour will not coexist in the long run, since one of these two strategies is always dominated by the other.