***Week 8 - Whistleblowing

Question 1

What is whistleblowing

Answer 1

• employee coveys info about a significant moral problem to someone in a position to take action on problem
  1) External: information passed outside org (lawyer)
  2) Internal: kept inside passed outside normal channels (legal department)
  (Schinzinger & Martin, 2000)

Question 2

The ethics of whistleblowing

Answer 2

• Morally permissible (not morally wrong to do it public interest) - disloyal, breach confidentiality, destroy employer-employee relationship
• Morally required (morally wrong NOT to do it)

Question 3

Morally Permissible - argument 1) Disloyal

Answer 3

1) Bok - torn between a) duty to public interest b) loyal to their company
- hopes stop game, not referee, and since blows whistle on own tea, act violation loyalty (Sisela Bok, 1982)
2) Corvino ‘wholehearted devotion to object of some kind (Corvino quoting John Ladd), BUT required willingness publicly criticise if objects behaviour exceeds tolerable bounds
3) Duska ‘depends on ties that demand self-sacrifice with no expectation of reward’ (Duska, 2007)

Question 4

Morally Permissible - argument 2) Breach of Confidentiality

Answer 4

• have ethical (and legal) duty of confidentiality to their company
• in serious case breach confidentiality morally justified benefit public
• legal protection un UK WB cannot be sued breach

Question 5

Morally Permissible - argument 3) Destroy employer-employee relationship

Answer 5

• should be relationship mutual obligations & trust
• turns employees into ‘potential enemies or political pawns’, also exception for extreme cases
  (Drucker, 1981)

Question 6

Morally Required

Answer 6

1) For
- duty to protect: only in serious issues outweigh other considerations e.g personal cost, disloyalty etc.
- failure report make you complicit, even if it wont stop the wrongdoing (Davis, 1996)

2) Against
- personal cost : sacked, blacklisted job industry- asks too much (Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 cannot sacked/sued, meet criteria)

Question 7

How to & Anonymous Whistleblowing

Answer 7

• facts, documents, normal channels first, legal advice, internal, external, consider anonymous & public interest
  1) Advantages
• cannot retaliate not know its you
  2) Disadvantages
• difficult investigate allegation, suspicion motivations, company ‘right to face its accusers’-impolite
• raise issue before know its you anyway
  ‘PAW. blow whistle anon before raising issue with anyone (Rocha & Song, 2012)

Question 8

Additional reading - Whistleblowing

Answer 8

1) organisations norms may require that certain situations be ‘overlooked’ (Jaques 1961)
2) early research on effects of the ‘diffusion of responsibility’ in bystander intervention showed that the larger he group of bystanders, the less likely any one bystander is to offer a victim help in an emergency (Darley et al 1968)
3) whistleblowers tend to have good job performance, to be more highly educated, to hold higher- level of supervisory positions, to score higher on tests of moral reasoning, and to value whistleblowing in the face of unethical behaviour (Brabeck, 1984)