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Whistleblowers are necessary to introduce change into a company when wrongdoings are identified. They are the first employees within a company, who witness and show wrongdoings that arise in the everyday dealings of a company. However, they are often ignored by their colleagues, supervisors and the company.
Within this research the issues that arise from neglecting the information provided by whistleblowers and ignoring the wrongdoing is illustrated using the case of "de Nederlandse Zorgautoriteit", henceforth NZA. It will be shown, which the key variables related to whistleblowing are, from the perspective of a potential whistleblower as well as from a company´s perspective. Finally, it is concluded what went wrong in the NZA case and recommendations are provided.

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Chapter 4. Theoretical part:
4.1. A model to assess the factors, influencing the whistleblowing intentions by Keil et al.:
It is important for a company to motivate its employees to use internal ways instead of making wrongdoings public, as stated in section 3.2. Therefore it should be aware and make use of the intervening mechanisms through which whistleblowing intentions are formed. These factors can be explained using the middle-range theory of whistleblowing by Keil et al. This model has been developed, tested and accordingly adjusted and as such is the dominant model explaining whistleblowing intentions.
The central explanatory variable of this model is the perceived "benefit-to-cost differential", henceforth BCD. (Keil et al., 2010) It is defined as the net difference between the perceived costs and expected benefits of whistleblowing from the perspective of a potential whistleblower. It is claimed that a witness of a wrongdoing would weigh the cost and benefits, associated with the whistleblowing and make a decision based on their difference. Therefore this decision making process will result in whistleblowing only in case the expected benefits outweigh the costs associated with whistleblowing. The key question is then which factors influence the BCD. For the selection of factors the social information processing framework of whistleblowing developed by Gundlach et al. is used. (Keil et al., 2010) This framework will be explained in the following.
Using the social information processing framework of Gundlach et al (2003) to identify factors influencing the decision-making process whether or not to blow the whistle:
By integrating power, justice and pro-social theories, Gundlach et al., (2003) tried to set up a social information processing framework. This framework tends to capture all the factors that are influencing the decision-making process of an individual whether or not to blow the whistle when identifying organizational wrongdoing. Gundlach et al., (2003) divide their model in interpersonal and intrapersonal factors. Interpersonal factors form the main part of the model and will be explained first. Intrapersonal factors could influence the interpersonal factors as will be explained later. The model itself is not shown in this section because the focus lies on the model of Keil et al., (2010) but for a better understanding of this part the model can be viewed in the summary in appendix A.
When an individual recognizes organizational wrongdoing, their emotions and their decisions whether they should blow the whistle are influenced by the cost and benefit analysis they make regarding the act of whistle-blowing. Besides of weighing the psychological and economic costs and benefits, potential whistleblowers also add attributions and responsibility judgments to their decision-making process. If a potential whistleblower attributes the wrongdoing to internal, stable and controllable causes, they will probably hold the wrongdoer(s) responsible and therefore they are more likely to decide to blow the whistle (Gundlach et al., 2003).
Social influence of the wrongdoer could also influence the decision-making process of a potential whistleblower. This social influence can be specified as the use of impression management tactics to manipulate the decision-making. These impression management tactics form the intrapersonal factors in the model. Both, defensive impression management and offensive impression management appear in the model. Defensive impression management means that the excuses and justifications made by the wrongdoer influence the (interpersonal) attributions by defining them as ´uncontrollable´ and ´unstable´. As earlier stated, perceived controllable and stable causes should lead to whistleblowing and therefore this defensive impression tactic lowers this incentive. The second tactic is the offensiv

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