The Influence of ethnic identity and construal of self on whistleblowing judgments in a multi-ethnic country: the case of Kenya

This thesis examines the influence of ethnic identity and construal of self on whistleblowing judgments of auditors in a multi-ethnic country, Kenya, in which strong loyalties within ethnic groups exist. In order to assess Kenyan auditors‘ whistleblowing judgments, this thesis used both single-item questions and the Multidimensional Ethics Measure developed by Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990). The influences of ethnic identity and construal of self were determined utilising the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure developed by Phinney (1992) and Roberts et al. (1999) and the Self-Construal Questionnaire developed by Singelis (1994). The findings suggest that one‘s sense of self as a member of an ethnic group cannot be ignored in an auditing context. Specifically, Multivariate Analysis of Variance results indicate that ethnic identity is significantly related to auditors‘ whistleblowing judgments; however, construal of self only has a partial influence. This has implications for the composition of audit teams. The results suggest that the influence of ethnic identity on whistleblowing in Kenya may be mitigated if audit teams comprise auditors from diverse ethnic backgrounds. This thesis makes a methodological contribution by showing that the constructs of construal of self and ethnic identity provide a more comprehensive understanding on how ethnicity influences whistleblowing judgments compared to treating ethnicity as a simple categorical variable.