Samenvatting

Whistleblowing and whistleblowers have received a lot of attention over the last decade, not just in popular discourse, also in academic research. So by now we know a lot about ‘the’ whistleblower; internal reporting procedures received less attention. That is remarkable, because from previous research we know that by far most reports of wrongdoing are (first) reported internally. Reporting in line seems the most logical step for most observations, but how well are Dutch public managers handling these reports, and what are the experiences of and with so-called confidential integrity advisors? The authors’ main research question is: How does the internal reporting system function in the public sector, and what improvements are possible? Here the authors answer these questions based on a survey conducted among Dutch civil servants, which was filled out by 7,543 respondents and on 25 in-depth interviews with confidential integrity officers.