Resisting the Tide: Why Administrative Elites Delay Whistleblowing Implementation

The adoption and transposition of EU Directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law set a homogenous regulation on whistleblowing for member states. Its implementation at national level varies significantly and we do not know why. Whistleblowing research focuses mainly on the determinants of whistleblowers’ intentions to report or on how this is viewed by organisational leaders. Little is known about the administrative elites’ approaches towards this reporting mechanism. Positioned between rule-makers and rule takers, the administrative elites are regulatory intermediaries that can act either as facilitators or gatekeepers for the implementation of whistleblowing. This paper seeks to explain why administrative elites delay the implementation of whistleblowing as a reporting mechanism at the workplace. It focuses on Romania as the most likely case for delay in implementation where these elites act as gatekeepers. We use semi-structured interviews conducted in April 2025 with administrative elites in several public offices. We use deductive thematic analysis to distinguish between individual, institutional and systemic reasons associated with elites’ behaviour. Our findings contribute to the whistleblowing literature and inform about the regulatory intermediaries in new democracies.