Should You Become a Whistleblower? (Part 1)
Those who work or volunteer in organizations see wrongdoing
around them all the time. One study of
federal employees found that about 7% had reported to someone (including
friends) that they had seen illegal or wasteful activities[1]. About 1% of all employees of companies that
use two compliance hotline services reported wrongdoing,[2]
which means about 1 million people
become whistleblowers each year in the U.S.
That is reassuring because whistleblowers are potentially useful
in modern business[3]. Employees seldom have power or control over the
entire cycle of a production or service, and they rarely have meaningful responsibility
for the final result of their work. Focusing
on how the work is accomplished distracts employees from the ethical grounds of
their actions. Organizations are so
complex that workers are not granted the liberty to question the
legitimacy of their leadership[4].
Less able to rely on workers to correct wrongdoing directly,
organizations need the whistleblower as a control measure. Because they are familiar with company
practices and infrastructure, whistleblowers are well situated to ask questions
and gather data to understand whether a wrong was done. A 2007 survey of mostly large (1,000+
employees) companies from more than 100 countries determined that internal
whistleblowers, outside of formal corporate controls, discovered 24% of fraud
incidents[5].
In the broader society, values that support whistleblowing,
such as freedom of speech and civil rights, are strengthened by the
whistleblower[6]. Whistleblowing also fits in a broad tradition
of righteous dissent. Harold Laski
wrote,
“No man ever remains free who
acquiesces in what he knows to be wrong.
His business as a citizen is to act upon the instructed judgment of his
conscience. He may be mistaken, but he
ought unceasingly to be aware that the act he opposes is, after all, no more
that the opinion of men who, like himself, are fallible.”[7]
Whistleblowers
tend to have good job performance ratings, to be more highly educated, to hold
higher-level or supervisory positions, to score higher on tests of moral
reasoning, and to value whistleblowing in the face of unethical behavior[8]. The whistleblower’s job responsibilities,
such as internal audit or, in my case, compliance oversight, can facilitate
whistleblowing[9]. Situational factors, like the seriousness of
the misconduct and the organizational climate that tolerates wrongdoing, can also
help drive whistleblowing[10].
While
whistleblowers are sometimes described as unstable or rogue characters, studies
have found slight evidence of personality predictors of whistleblowing[11]. Interviews of whistleblowers have revealed
generally conservative people who built their careers by conforming to
requirements of bureaucratic life and believed that they defended the true
mission on the organization by revealing illicit practices. Many whistleblowers find strength in belief
systems or external supporters who encouraged their decision[12].
The
whistleblower is seldom the heroic warrior standing between the organization
and the deaths of hundreds. The
whistleblower is more likely to be an
ordinary employee making a good faith attempt to stop what he perceives to be a
serious wrongdoing[13].
Often whistleblowing involves speaking
out in a situation that is morally ambiguous[14];
the facts are not always clear, and the conclusion of wrongdoing is not agreed
by all.
C. Fred Alford warned that the potential whistleblower must
forsake some commonly accepted understandings in order to manage the tasks she is
about to undertake. In particular, the
whistleblower must be willing to abandon her belief that:
-
The individual matters
-
Law and justice can be relied on
-
Ours is a government of laws, not men
-
The individual will not be sacrificed for the
group
-
Loyalty is not simply herd instinct
-
One’s friends will remain loyal if colleagues do
not
-
The organization is not fundamentally immoral
-
It makes sense to stand up and do the right
thing
-
Someone, somewhere, who is charge knows, cares,
and will do the right thing
-
The truth matters, and someone will want to know
it
-
If one is right and persistent, things will turn
out all right in the end
-
Even if they do not turn out all right, other
people will know and understand
-
The family is a haven in a heartless world
-
Even if these beliefs prove false, the
individual need not become cynical
Civilization
is marked by the surrender of power by individuals to government, and
revolution represents the withdrawal of that surrender[15]. No less do employees surrender power in
expectation of compensation and reasonable treatment by their employers. When individuals embark on revolt in large
social movements or in the quotidian insurrections of whistleblowers, they do
so with qualms, trepidations, and guilt.
But with all their inner turmoil they also think that they are right and
just in their actions and that the established rules and rulers are unjust.
When the wrongdoing results from controllable and normal
organizational causes, the observer presumes that the actor intended to commit
the wrong and she becomes more likely to blow the whistle. When it comes, the company’s retaliation may
be perceived as another example of controllable and intentional wrongdoing,
increasing the probability of further whistleblowing[16].
Values and emotions, rather than rational cost-benefit
analyses, dominate the decision to blow the whistle[17]. The whistleblower’s initial response may be
accompanied by fear of disrupting the bond of loyalty or unleashing retaliation. When the company retaliates, the employee’s company
loyalty diminishes, and the angered employee proceeds to further, less
inhibited responses. In this way, retaliation
against an internal disclosure can shift the observer’s evaluations in ways
that make external disclosure appear to be a more appealing or less risky
option than silence.
While a self-evaluation of motives is a critical step before
one undertakes the task of becoming a whistleblower, it is seldom enough[18]. Most whistleblowers are unable to say
whether their action was personally or socially motivated, driven by ego, greed
for a potentially large payout, revenge, or an altruism worthy of a cultural
hero[19].
For the ethicist, whistleblowing done properly requires
appropriate motivations, evidence, analysis and use of channels of reporting[20]. A whistleblower, then, is on thin ethical
ice if she acts out of a personal desire to get ahead or does it out of
spite. By the ethicist’s account, the
whistleblower’s stance is dubious if her evidence is scant, she has not done a
competent analysis, or she has not followed the proper channels. But this traditional view sets the bar too
high. Motivations are always mixed,
evidence is usually ambiguous, and proper channels are built to stifle dissent.
You have observed an incident, whose ethicality is dubious. Your motivations to speak up or be silent are
a rich mix, involving loyalties, ambitions, emotions, responses to ethical
training, and other personal and organizational forces. You cannot be entirely sure of the
consequences of objecting or acquiescing in the behavior. Still, you must decide what to do.
[1] U.S. Merit Systems
Protection Board. “Blowing the Whistle: Barriers to Federal
Employees Making Disclosures.”
A report to the President and the Congress of the United States. 2011
[4] Brief, Arthur P., Robert T.
Buttram and Janet M. Dukerich. “Collective Corruption in the Corporate World:
Toward a Process Model.” In Groups at Work: Theory and Research.
Marlene E. Turner (ed.) Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 2001
[6] Mansbach,
Abraham. “Whistleblowing as Fearless Speech: The Radical Democratic Effects of
Late Modern Parrhesia.” In Whistleblowing
and Democratic Values. David Lewis and Wim Vanderkerkhove (eds.). The
International Whistleblowing Research Network.
2011
[7] Laski, Harold J. “The Dangers of Obedience.” In
The
Dangers of Obedience & Other Essays. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation. 1968
[8]
Mesmer-Magnus, Jessica R. and
Chockalingam Viswesvaran. “Whistleblowing
in Organizations: An Examination of Correlates of Whistleblowing Intentions,
Actions, and Retaliation.” Journal of Business Ethics 62 (2005): 277–297
[9] Vadera, Abhijeet
K., Ruth V. Aguilar and Brianna B. Caza. “Making
Sense of Whistle-Blowing’s Antecedents: Learning from Research on Identity and
Ethics Programs.” Business
Ethics Quarterly 19:4 (October 2009), 553-586
[10] Miceli, Marcia P.,
Janet P. Near, and Terry Morehead Dworkin. Whistle-blowing in Organizations. New York: Rutledge. 2008
[11] Ibid
[12] Glazer, Myron
Peretz and Penina Migdal Glazer. The Whistleblowers: Exposing Corruption in
Government and Industry. New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1989
[13]
Cassematis, P. G. and
R. Wortley. “Prediction
of Whistleblowing or Non-reporting Observation.” Journal of Business Ethics
117 (2013): 615-634
[14] Alford, C. Fred. Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational
Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. 2001
[16] Gundlach, Michael
J., Mark J. Martinko, Scott C. Douglas. “A new
approach to examining whistle-blowing: the influence of cognitions and anger.” SAM Advanced Management Journal. 73.477 (Autumn, 2008): 40-50
[17]
Henik, Erika Gail. “Mad as
Hell or Scared Stiff? The Effects of Value Conflict and Emotions on Potential
Whistle-Blowers.” Journal of Business Ethics. 80.1 (June 2008): 111-119.
[18]
Devine, Tom and Tarek F. Maassarani. The
Corporate Whistleblower’s Survival Guide. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers, Inc. 2011
[19] Miethe, Terance D. 1999
[20] Duska, Ronald,
Brenda Shay Duska and Julia Regatz. Accounting Ethics. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011,
Bok, Sisella. “Whistleblowing
and Professional Responsibility.” New
York University Education Quarterly 11.4 (1980): 2-10, and Moberg, Daniel J. “The
Organizational Context of Moral Courage: Creating Environments That Account for
Dual-Processing Models of Courageous Behavior.” In Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the
Right Thing at Work.
Debra R. Comer and Gina Vega (eds.) Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe. 2011. 188-208
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