...Position Paper Whistleblowing, Is it Ethical? Whistleblowing, Is it Ethical? The ethical discussion behind whistleblowing has been debated for decades. With each level of every organization seeing the act of whistleblowing from a different position it has become a topic that all business schools address. The Whistleblowing Helpline defines whistleblowing as “raising a concern about a wrong doing within an organization” (About Whistleblowing). Furthermore, whistleblowing specifically refers to the revealing of concerns about legitimate criminal or unjust acts that present danger to the environment of the organization. Therefore, the whistleblower is the person who has a concern within their organization and is moved to raise that concern to the leadership of their workplace or to an external authority (About Whistleblowing). When done in the right context and for the right reasons whistleblowing is ethically acceptable under both the Utilitarian theory and the Deontological theory of ethics. While the act of whistleblowing is considered ethical under the reasoning of these two theories, the outcome of whistleblowing is not always glorious for the whistleblower. Instead most whistleblowers raise their concerns as a means of creating a better future for the organization, as well as all of its stakeholders. An employee who chooses to be a whistleblower is often times ridiculed and despised within their organization, especially when little or nothing is done about their...
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...Whistleblowing and the global impact. Table of Contents ESSAY Introduction The importance and understanding of whistleblowing The notion of whistleblowing Whistleblowing – an act of good will Whistleblowing – an act of revenge The role of the government Government whistleblowing How Snowden formed society Introduction Whistleblowing, an act of certain controversy, has provided material for many a discussion. It has filled our newspapers, televisions and radios on a daily basis, since Wikileaks went public with its first act of exposing illegal activity. ‘Whistleblowing’ is a dynamic process involving at least three social actors; the wrongdoer, the whistleblower and the recipient, each of whom takes actions in response to the other’ (Near et al., p 509, 1996), while accepting the associated dangers and risks. Current events relating to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning have sparked intense debate throughout the world regarding policy changes, creation of new laws and the conduct of government and corporations. It is widely agreed that whistleblowing exists and happens on a daily basis. Scholars have examined the topic over the years narrowing it down to ethnical divergences or even to how the act of wrongdoing can impact a whistleblower. The importance and understanding of whistleblowing Age has a significant impact...
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...Introduction The purpose of this article is to increase awareness of the need for whistleblower policies for universities, governmental entities, and organizations. According to wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, a whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about a wrongdoing occurring in an organization or body of people, usually this person would be from that same organization. Wikipedia states that whistle blowing is the disclosure to the public or to authorities, usually by an employee, of wrongdoing in a company or government department. Whistleblowing inside the workplace is the reporting, by employees or ex-employees, of wrongdoing such as fraud, malpractice, mismanagement, breach of health and safety law or any other illegal or unethical act, either on the part of management or by fellow employees, cited from wikipedia. A whistleblowing policy encourages staff to speak out if they have legitimate concerns about wrongdoings, as distinct from individual grievances, and establishes an accessible procedure for doing so. The policy may form part of a wider code of conduct. In order to encourage disclosure, many federal and state statutes prohibit employers from retaliating against an employee who files reports. The revealed misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health/safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally...
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...Review of Issue Edward Snowden’s actions of disclosing valuable and classified NSA documents raise a number of ethical issues. Some people claim that Snowden did not do any wrong since he disclosed the wrong thing that was going on. However true that may be, this paper argues that there are better channels in which he could have used to let the cat out of the bag. Many are questioning if our government was betraying citizens because of the monitoring activity, and never revealing it. There was an absence present that lacked a legitimate procedure of informing citizens that they may be conducting unethical and unconstitutional activities. With the government’s activities set aside, the fact that he chose to reveal the classified information without following the right procedure will earn him the title of a whistleblower. A...
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...laws to protect a whistle blower very few people do and those who do blow the whistle aren’t always happy after it’s done. At the same time those who do report do receive benefits and can say they truly have honesty and integrity. Ethics is more than just what’s right and wrong. What is right to one person can be considered wrong to another. Ethics are based off of what we know to be morally right or wrong. Smoking marijuana is wrong in the United States but considered ordinary or right in Amsterdam. Some ethical decisions go further than knowing what is the right thing to do, sometimes our emotions can get the best of us and leave us making poor decisions. When deciding the ethical thing to do in a situation you must set your emotions aside and base your decision on what you know or consider being right. Ethics is a large part of accounting. You are constantly faced with decisions where you need to decide the ethical thing to do. Whistleblowing involves the act of reporting wrongdoing within an organization to internal or external parties (Eaton & Akers, 2007).As a whistleblower your ethical decisions are what decide if you should blow the whistle. You know that adjusting numbers such as Enron did is wrong and unethical. Many people are afraid to blow the whistle though even if a company or employee is being unethical. They are afraid of the ramifications; will they lose their job, will another company hire them, and many other things. Most companies do have a whistle...
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...The Whistleblowing Case Studies There are various cases about whistleblowing, one of them is the case of Motorola CFO, Paul Liska.1 He has been fired after giving a presentation. In the presentation, Liska pointed out to Motorola directors that the cell phone unit, Mobile Devices, missed its sales projection for the preceding three months. Liska intended to attack Sanjay Jha, the head of Motorola’s cell phone division, by doing the presentation at the board meeting. The whistleblowing occurred because Liska and Jha did not get along well, and Liska tried to save the situation with an attack on Jha. Liska objected to Jha’s hiring, his compensation package and the co-CEO agreement. Liska’s behavior markedly deteriorated after Jha’s hiring, implying that he was unhappy to be outranked by the new co-CEO. The reason behind Liska’s inflammatory presentation is a matter of contention. Liska says he was trying to fulfill his duty to the company by raising a red flag about the cellphone unit’s projections. Motorola says Liska knew he was on his way out, and he tried to extort the company by setting himself up as a whistle-blower who was being fired for speaking out. Another famous whistleblowing case is the case of WikiLeaks.2 WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organization which aims to publish online submissions of classified information, news leaks 3 from anonymous news sources and whistleblowers.4 It unleashed the wrath of the U.S. government and a wave of recrimination and...
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...Whistleblowing and Ethical Motivations Marie Whitehead Soc. 120 Introduction to Ethics and Social Responsibility Prof: Christopher Messer March 31, 2014 The term whistleblower was first used in England and referred to the practice of British police officers blowing a whistle when a crime was being committed. This would then raise the alarm to other law enforcement officers to alert them that something was endangering the public (Princeton, n.d.). Today, however, the term shares a much broader meaning and is met with a variety of ethical motivations. When we hear the term, “whistleblower”, we know that someone has raised a concern regarding a possible wrongdoing in either a government agency or a private company, and they want to make others aware. The status of the whistleblower is often debated: as Rothschild and Miethe (1999) note, “some see whistleblowers as traitorous violators of organizational loyalty norms; other see whistleblowers as heroic defenders of values considered more important than company loyalty”. In addition, whistleblowing is a “new form of worker resistance” relevant to the “unending battle between labor and management to control the workplace” (Rothschild, et.al, 1999). But with the right motives in place, whistleblowing is good for an organization or agency because it protects that organization and agency from fraud, misconduct, and in most cases, failure. And, when affective communication is in place, the organization’s goals are kept in...
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...EMPLOYMENT ESSAY Legislation to protect and encourage "whistleblowing" in relation to work issues has proved inadequate.' Discuss. Whistleblowing by definition is when an employee provides information of illegal activity or any other wrong doing to their employer or supervisor. The concern raised by the employee may be about a fellow employee, a third party outside of the workplace or even the employer and the employee does not necessarily have to be directly affected by the illegal activity to have the right to disclose it. The general consensus is that an employee who makes a “protected disclosure” that is in the public interest should be protected by law from any unfair treatment resulting in making the disclosure. In this essay I will evaluate whether the law protects whistleblowers adequately. Prior to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 coming into force on the 2nd of July 1999, whistleblowers did not have protection against unfair dismissal. Employees who attempted to expose of illegal activity would face open discrimination by their bosses and fellow employees, they would also face disciplinary action and were often denied of career advancement. The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 came into force to protect workers and a worker in this context includes most workers in the public, private and voluntary sectors. The Act does not apply to self-employed workers other than those in the NHS, and voluntary workers such as charity trustees and charity volunteers...
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...The Need for Whistleblowing Legislation in Canada: A Critical Defence Jonathan Carson Research Officer The Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario 1 Dundas Street West Suite 2310, Box 72 Toronto, ON M5G 1Z3 carson@amapceo.on.ca Paper presented to the Canadian Political Science Association Conference, June 2006 The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of AMAPCEO Working Paper – Please do not cite without permission from the author Introduction This paper is about the need for whistleblowing legislation in Canada, at both the federal and provincial levels. The focus of the paper is squarely on the public service. Although certain jurisdictions (for example, the United Kingdom1) have a single disclosure regime covering both the private and public sectors, then general trend throughout the world is for distinct legislation for the two sectors. In Canada, there are already numerous statutory avenues for individuals in both the public and private sectors to blow the whistle; however, the grounds for disclosure are generally quite circumscribed, with the statutes tending to deal only with specific concerns, e.g. occupational health and safety or the environment.2 At present whistleblowing legislation is coming into vogue across Canada, at both levels of government. This paper argues that such legislation should have the modest goal of protecting good faith whistleblowers. This...
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...06 – Whistleblower, Product Safety vs. Animal Rights Whistleblower 70-85 * Whistleblowing is a new label generated by awareness of ethical conflicts encountered at work. They sound an alarm in the organization that threatens public interest * Whistleblowing has high stakes * Moral conflicts on several levels whether to speak out about abuses or risks or serious neglect * Things to consider? - ARGUMENTS * Is speaking out in fact in the public interest * Does speaking out, outweigh the his responsibilities against his colleagues and institution he works for * If 1 and 2 are valid, what about the fear ot the results * Can be threatened to undergo psychiatric fitness test, declared unfit, fired etc, marked as crazy * Like all dissent, whistleblowing makes public a disagreement with an authority or a majority view. * Dissent, breach of loyalty and accusation. Is there ways to find alternatives in-order not to breach these things? * You could be harming something bigger by being a whistle blower * Most important question, whether the existing avenues for change within the organization have been explored * Whistleblowing should be last alternative because of its destructive side affects, only chose when all other things are considered and rejected. * Does it infringe personal or private matters that we have no right to invade. Animal Rights – 135-164 * 200 million animals were used for scientific purposes ...
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...code of ethics for Amgen is “doing the right thing” and O’brien followed the code of ethics and raised a red flag to their superiors. Amgen was carrying out illegal activities because they were not reporting the issues they were having with their drugs. He was “doing the right thing” yet was terminated after doing so. Amgen’s reaction to O’brien’s doing was contradictive to their code of ethics. A whistleblower is essentially a person working within a company and discovers wrongdoings the company or employees are taking part in. the individual will either report these wrong doings to another individual in the company which is internal whistleblowing, or they will report the wrong doing to someone on the outside of the organization, which is know as external whistleblowing. I believe he did take the right steps since he first alerted a senior executive of the company. He was trying to keep it internal and get things fixed before he went any further which I think would be the correct thing to do. After realizing the issues weren’t being resolved he could have blew the whistle externally with in that four-week period before he was terminated. His job was to improve “compliance processes with high inherent risk to public safety, major criminal and civil liability, or both” for Amgen. From an ethical perspective O’Brien was just doing his job and was doing the right thing especially since safety is a big deal in drug sales. He did the right thing raising a red flag to the senior...
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...to theirs attempt to follow the rules. Job security when an employee stays his or her entire life with the same company is a thing of the past, and with that also employee loyalty is long gone (Bowie and Werhane, 2005). According to Halbert and Ingulli (2012),” Employment-At-Will is a legal rule developed in the nineteenth century; giving employers unfettered power to dismiss their employees at will for good cause, for no cause, or even for cause morally wrong, without being thereby guilty of a legal wrong” (p. 49). This rule basically allows the employers to dismiss the employee services whenever it is necessary without a meaningful cause or apparent reason for doing so. However since 1935 when the workers fought for their right to organize and form unions, they were guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court, that employers could not use employment-at-will as a means of intimidating or coercing its employees with respect to their self organization. Same thing happened in the 1960s with the federal civil right laws,...
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...CHAPTER 8 WHISTLEBLOWING AND EMPLOYEE LOYALTY* Three Mile Island. In early 1983, almost four years after the near meltdown at Unit 2, two officials in the Site Operations Office of General Public Utilities reported a reckless company effort to clean up the contaminated reactor. Under threat of physical retaliation from superiors, the GPU insiders released evidence alleging that the company had rushed the TMI cleanup without testing key maintenance systems. Since then, the Three Mile Island mop-up has been stalled pending a review of GPU’s management.1 The releasing of evidence of the rushed cleanup at Three Mile Island is an example of whistleblowing. Norman Bowie defines whistleblowing as “the act by an employee of informing the public on the immoral or illegal behavior of an employer or supervisor.”2 Ever since Daniel Elsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, the question of whether an employee should blow the whistle on his company or organization has become a hotly contested issue. Was Elsberg right? Is it right to report the shady or suspect practices of the organization one works for? Is one a stool pigeon or a dedicated citizen? Does a person have an obligation to the public that overrides his obligation to his employer or does he simply betray a loyalty and become a traitor if he reports his company? There are proponents on both sides of the issue––those who praise whistle-blowers as civic heroes and those who condemn them as “finks.” Glen and Shearer who wrote...
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...Employment-at-will Doctrine Whistleblower Strategy Yasser Benadada Strayer University Professor Holeman Table of Contents Employment at will Doctrine 2 Public-policy exception 2 Implied-contract exception 3 Covenant-of-good-faith and Tort based exceptions 3 Evaluation each of the eight (8) scenarios: 4 Recommend whistleblower policy 7 Fundamental Items to Whistleblower policy 8 References 10 Employment at will Doctrine According to Clarkson, Miller, Jentz & Cross (2004, p.235), employment at will is a common law doctrine under which either party may terminate an employment relationship at any time for any reason, unless a contract specifies otherwise. Today this common law doctrine is widely used and applies in every state except Montana. However, state and federal statutes that govern employment relationships prevent the doctrine from being applied under certain circumstances. As such, employees who are wrongfully discharged may bring legal action against their employer based on violations of employment contract or statutory law. These state and federal statutes collectively are known as the exceptions to the employment at will doctrine that the courts adopted because of the harsh effects on employees. Public-policy exception According to Sentell & Robbins (2008), under the public-policy exception to employment at will, an employee is wrongfully discharged when the termination is against an explicit, well-established public policy of...
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...their employees at will for a good cause, for no cause, or even for cause morally wrong, without being thereby guilty of a legal wrong” (Halbert, T. and Ingulli p.49). According to Justice Harlan, “The right of an employee to quit the services of the employer, for whatever reason, is the same as the right of the employer, for whatever reason, to dispense with the services of such employee. A theoretical support for employment- at -will was the laissez-faire (hands-off) viewpoint. This doctrine is also referred to the “freedom of contract”. The contract is a conception that employers are in liberty to dispose of what they own. It can be the disposing of their labor, for instance, as the employer sees fit. Professional voluntary contractual agreements are legitimately enforceable (Falcone 1999). Not all states assert at-will relationships. For example, Montana has enacted a statute that prohibits employers from discharging employees without "good cause." Further, in states where at-will employment does exist, it is littered with statutory exceptions. That means you cannot terminate workers if the discharge infringes on a protected right or goes against public policy (Falcone 1999). There are exceptions to the Employment-at Will-Doctrine. The US Supreme Court proclaimed that employees could not be fired as punishment for endeavoring to establish unions in 1935. In the 1960s, Federal Civil Rights created laws against employees who fire workers because of their race, national origins...
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