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Dissertation
Unmasking Authenticity (or Lack Thereof): The Effect of Assurance and the Presentation of ESG Information on Whistleblowing Behavior Regarding ESG Misconduct
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
07/2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000007899
Abstract
With the surge of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information, companies face mounting pressure from stakeholders to make meaningful progress on their ESG activities, creating an environment ripe for misconduct. Prior research focuses on curtailing misconduct by encouraging individuals to report on schemes driven by financial greed. Yet, the persistence of ESG misconduct with consistently lower levels of whistleblowing cases suggests that ESG misconduct poses unique challenges. I conduct an experiment to test how the presence of ESG assurance and the presentation of ESG reports with financial information jointly influence employees’ propensity to blow the whistle on ESG misconduct. I find that employees are more likely to blow the whistle when they encounter unassured integrated ESG reports relative to either assured or stand-alone ESG reports because they view the company’s ESG initiatives to be less authentic. My study may shed light on the best practices and regulations over ESG reporting.
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Details
- Title
- Unmasking Authenticity (or Lack Thereof)
- Creators
- Cathy Sungmin Jun
- Contributors
- Ryan D Sommerfeldt (Co-Chair)Bernard Wong-On-Wing (Co-Chair)M. Kathleen Harris (Committee Member)SeungKyo Ahn (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Carson College of Business
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 77
- Identifiers
- 99901297594801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation