Processing, Sensemaking, and Organizing Moral Excuses of Whistleblowers in Public Organizations: Religiosity Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This study offers a fresh exploration of whistleblowing hesitation in public organizations using religiosity perspectives. We introduce the concept of faith‐driven moral hesitation, which highlights how religiosity shapes ethical silence through emotional, spiritual, and social processes. This study is based on interviews with 23 senior officials in local governments operating in a province nationally known as the Islamic Boarding School. The study suggests that hesitation arises through a cyclical process: processing (intuitive discomfort), sensemaking (moral justification), and organizing (social validation of silence). Essentially, four interrelated themes of faith‐driven moral hesitation , such as forgiveness misapplied , prohibition of moral judgment , deference to divine justice , and social‐religious conformity , demonstrate how silence is legitimized as spiritual humility, loyalty, or moral restraint. Rather than apathy or fear alone, participants rationalized nondisclosure as virtuous, drawing on religious narratives of patience, mercy, and divine oversight. Theoretically, this study contributes to the literature by reframing silence as a socially sustained and spiritually endorsed moral identity, which can be subject to misapplication in specific contexts. Practically, it calls for culturally grounded ethical training, safe moral reflection spaces, faith‐aligned leadership, and collaboration with religious figures to “reposition” whistleblowing as an act of integrity.