Ethical Whistleblowing
What is Whistleblowing ?
whistleblowing normally has been identified as an action taken by an employee, alerting society to potential or actual damage to the public as a result of present or future actions of the firm.
Whistleblowing can also be broken down into two categories
- Internal Whistleblowing — is when an employee will first try to notify their superiors of whatever wrong doing is occurring. The employee will follow the proper channels to notify the upper management in oder for their complaint to be heard.
- External Whistleblowing — is when an employee will notify the media, public interest groups or regulatory agencies rather than the management of the firm they work for.
There are four elements of the whistleblowing process:
the whistleblower,
the whistleblowing act or complaint,
the party to whom the complaint is made,
and the organization against which the complaint is lodged.
The act might be labeled as one of “dissidence,” somewhat analogous to civil disobedience.
Ethical whistleblowing…
Edward Snowden is a main character when talking of ethics .His have been widely discussed and debated in news media and academia worldwide.
The definition of ethics is the moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior. The ethical implications of whistleblowing can be negative as well as positive. However, sometimes employees may blow the whistle as an act of revenge. Rosemary O’Leary explains this in her short volume on a topic called guerrilla government. “Rather than acting openly, guerrillas often choose to remain “in the closet”, moving clandestinely behind the scenes, salmon swimming upstream against the current of power. Over the years, I have learned that the motivations driving guerrillas are diverse. The reasons for acting range from the altruistic (doing the right thing) to the seemingly petty (I was passed over for that promotion). Taken as a whole, their acts are as awe inspiring as saving human lives out of a love of humanity and as trifling as slowing the issuance of a report out of spite or anger.” For example, of the more than 1,000 whistleblower complaints that are filed each year with the Pentagon’s Inspector General, about 97 percent are not substantiated. It is believed throughout the professional world that an individual is bound to secrecy within their work sector. Discussions of whistleblowing and employee loyalty usually assume that the concept of loyalty is irrelevant to the issue or, more commonly, that whistleblowing involves a moral choice that pits the loyalty that an employee owes an employer against the employee’s responsibility to serve the public interest. Robert A. Larmer describes the standard view of whistleblowing in the Journal of Business Ethics by explaining that an employee possesses prima facie (based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise) duties of loyalty and confidentiality to their employers and that whistleblowing cannot be justified except on the basis of a higher duty to the public good. It is important to recognize that in any relationship which demands loyalty the relationship works both ways and involves mutual enrichment.
