<p>Past research has tended to view employees who report unethical behavior as heroes who aim to stem the tide of unethical behavior in organizations. Our paper argues that there can be more self-serving motives underlying such behavior. Specifically, drawing on Dual-Strategies Theory, we propose that, when work is highly competitive, two distinct status striving motivations will arise in employees: dominance striving and prestige striving. We further argue that dominance striving will lead to a desire to undermine (<i>the dominance path</i>), and prestige striving will lead to a desire to appear virtuous (<i>the prestige path</i>). The two distinct desires will eventually drive people to report others’ misconducts at work. In addition, we argue that the internal reporter’s status certainty will moderate the effects of competition on status striving motivations, such that the indirect effect of competition on reporting others’ unethical behavior through the dominance path will be stronger when the internal reporter’s status certainty is low while the indirect effect through the prestige path will be stronger when the internal reporter’s status certainty is high. Results from an experiment and a multi-wave field study were generally supportive of our arguments.</p>