Syahrul Ahmar Ahmad
Faculty of Accountancy
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Johor, Malaysia.

Malcolm Smith
Zubaidah Ismail
Faculty of Business and Law
Edith Cowan University, Australia.

 

Despite extensive research having been undertaken on the issue of whistleblowing globally, empirical study in this area is still scarce in Malaysia. This paper examines internal whistleblowing intentions among internal auditors in Malaysian organisational settings. Although, internal auditors hold a unique position in their organisations to prevent, deter and detect corporate wrongdoings, the role of this profession in investigating their ethical decision-making behaviour towards internal whistleblowing has been much neglected. A mail survey was conducted to investigate a variety of demographic, organisational and situational factors that could influence the internal auditors’ ethical decision-making process. Results are generally consistent with predictions based on a model of whistleblowing as a type of prosocial behaviour. The findings confirm those from previous studies, suggesting that organisational members have different reactions to different types of wrongdoings. Implications of the findings on Malaysian organisations for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords: ethics, internal auditors, prosocial behaviour, whistleblowing