Not on My Watch: Facilitating peer reporting through employee job attitudes and personality traits

Because employees often conceal their misbehavior from management, counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) can be difficult to detect. Fortunately, peer reporting – which occurs when employees report their coworkers' misdeeds to organizational authorities – may enhance the detection of CWBs. Little is known, however, about the variables that facilitate peer reporting. Using a sample of working adults (N = 267), we examined job attitudes and personality traits as moderators of the relationship between CWB observations and CWB reporting. Our results suggest that most CWBs employees observe go unreported. Furthermore, we found that organizational commitment strengthened the relationship between CWB observations and CWB reporting. The other hypothesized moderators, however, failed to yield the expected interaction effects.