Developing a Paradigmatic Model of Organizational Whistleblowing in Industrial and Mining Companies: A Grounded Theory Approach

Abstract

In industrial and mining companies, every unreported safety hazard, concealed quality fraud, or environmental violation can lead to human casualties, production disruptions, and reputational crises. Nevertheless, the mere existence of a reporting channel does not guarantee that employees will report misconduct. This study aimed to identify the components and indicators of organizational whistleblowing and to develop a paradigmatic model of whistleblowing in industrial and mining companies. The study employed a qualitative design using the systematic grounded theory approach of Strauss and Corbin. Participants consisted of experts and key informants from industrial and mining companies located in the industrial estates of Kerman Province, who were selected through purposive and snowball sampling. Data were collected through 15 semi-structured interviews until theoretical saturation was achieved and were analyzed through three stages of open, axial, and selective coding. The trustworthiness of the findings was established based on Lincoln and Guba’s criteria through strategies including member checking, peer review, and maintenance of an audit trail. Data analysis yielded 45 final open codes and 15 subcategories, which were organized into the six components of the paradigmatic model. The core category was identified as “responsible whistleblowing within a context of protected trust and effective case handling.” Causal conditions included the preventive and ethical orientation of reporting and the scope of reportable misconduct; contextual conditions comprised a culture of silence, power structure, and managerial roles; intervening conditions included trust in the reporting channel, identity protection, multidimensional retaliation risk, and the quality of case handling; strategies included staged reporting, escalation to independent channels, secure technical architecture and independent governance, legal–psychological protection, and ethical reinforcement; and consequences were identified along two pathways: “correction–trust” and “failure–silence.” Effective whistleblowing in industrial and mining companies does not emerge merely through the establishment of a single reporting channel; responsible reporting constitutes the condition for its legitimacy, protection of the reporter is the condition for its occurrence, and effective case handling is the condition for its continuity. The proposed model can provide a basis for designing reporting systems, anti-retaliation policies, and feedback mechanisms in these companies.