Fraud happens in diverse forms depending on whether it is a private or government organization. Corruption is a type of fraud that occurs in government organizations and is proportionally discovered at the district, city, and provincial levels.
Of the various corruption cases, those originating from the district and city levels are in the first rank. Finding a means to report such cases, whistleblowing presents as one of the solutions. It is an act of reporting wrong, illegal, and immoral practices by members of the organization to other parties or organizations that can influence the Action.
"Through whistleblowing, the occurred errors can be immediately identified and fixed hence increasing efficiency, employee morale, and potentially avoiding negative reputation and financial consequences of lawsuits. Thus, it embodies great social value for organizations and society in general,” said Priyastiwi, S.E., M.Si., Ak., CA. during the open defense for a doctoral program in economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business UGM, Friday (4/12).
In her online defense, the lecturer of Institute of Economic Science Widya Wiwaha said the 2020 ACFE report showed that organizations that provide hotline care are able to detect fraud by around 49 percent. Of the fraud detection and reporting, as many as 54 percent were reported by employees who received training in fraud detection.
For this reason, fraud reporting hotline services play a significant role in detecting fraud. Anonymous hotline services can be used as a medium to report fraud or errors," she said.
In terms of public organizations in Indonesia, said Priyastiwi, corruption reporting is dispatched to institutions that are authorized to resolve whistleblowing cases. These institutions include the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the
Ombudsman Institute of the Republic of Indonesia, the Judicial Commission, the National Police Commission, the Prosecutors Commission, and the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK). Even though the institutions that deal with the reports has been determined, the protection for the whistleblowers has not been yet defined in clear and specific laws and regulations.
Therefore, through the dissertation “The Effect of Protection Guarantees, Error Risk, and Trust Mediation on Fraud Reporting on Anonymous Reporting Channels”, Priyastuti wanted to examine the effect of certification and the quality of protection guarantees on the intention to report fraud to government organizations in Indonesia. In addition, analysis towards whistleblowers on the intention to report fraud mediated by the trust variable is also within the scope.
She mentioned that the provision on the protection of whistleblowers in Indonesia is defined in the Law on Witness and Victim Protection No. 13/2006. Regulations on whistleblower protection must also be distinct from laws and policies on witness protection.
According to her, there is some overlap between the two, whistleblower protection should emphasize the confidentiality of individual identities, whereas witness protection usually involves the physical protection of individuals who will testify in a case. In whistleblowing, it must not be detrimental to the career and interests of individuals in the workplace.
"The focus of whistleblowing is on the information, not on the person making the disclosure. They should not have been asked to become witnesses, but only as observers after the reporting was done,” she said.
Furthermore, Priyastuti explained, fraud has a different level of risk, therefore the research she conducted also examined the effect of error risk on the intention to report fraud. For this reason, she conducted the analysis using two internet-based experiments with master’s students and employees as participants.
Experiment 1 examined the effect of protection guarantees certification and error risk on the intention to report fraud. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of the quality of protection guarantees and error risk on the intention of financial reporting.
She used the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to verify the proposed hypotheses and path analysis to examine the effect of trust mediation on the relationship between the certification and quality of protection guarantees on reporting intention.
"The results showed that certification and quality of protection guarantees affect the intention to report fraud mediated by trust. Furthermore, the interaction effect between the error risk and the certification and quality of protection guarantees on reporting intentions is significant,” she said.
This study revealed that in conditions of high error risk, the difference in reporting intention between the existent and non-existent certification of protection guarantees is smaller than when the error risk is low. Also, the difference in reporting intention between the high and low quality of protection guarantees is smaller than when the error risk is low.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Photo: Kompas Megapolitan
Translator: Salma