Ethical Whistleblowing

Duska argues that whistleblowing is always justified. He claims that employees do “not have an obligation of loyalty to a company, even a prima facie one, because companies are not the kind of things that are properly objects of loyalty” (Duska, pg. 424). Duska denies one of Bok’s key conditions to blow the whistle, loyalty. This is because Duska sees the purpose of business is to produce goods and services and to make a profit. Duska’s view of a business’s purpose prevents the company, or in Case C the university, from becoming an object deserving of loyalty.

During the G20 summit in Seoul 2010, the whistleblower protection law was evaluated across the countries and Australia was one of the highly rated countries with US and Canada in the public sector (Wolfe. 2014, p. 4). On the contrary, the level of whistleblower protection in the private sector is found weaker than the public sector (Wolfe. 2014, p. 4). This report critically examines the current protection regime in both public and private sectors and depicts the lives of whistleblowers after disclosing the wrongdoings of the organisation to our society. Despite the legislative requirement to establish stronger whistleblower protection law in Australia, it is not applied

Several circumstances determine the protection of whistleblowers. This might include employers reporting violation in the employment discrimination laws and the reporting of hazard communication act. In case an employee is discharged from job for using the employer’s telephone to report violations, the employee can be protected by the whistle blower act in Texas. The whistleblower laws majorly protect the government employees with an approximate of 90% of the government workers benefiting from these laws. However, the private sector employees are not covered by the whistleblower law. Question 9 Over time, stakeholders have played a very significant role in corporations. They are the people who invest on the corporations through devoting their finances to support the running of the corporation. Being the owners of the cooperation’s, stakeholders are responsible for changing the corporation’s capital share and selling the corporations assets. Question 10 Whistleblowers are people who often expose hidden activities that seem illegal or even unethical. These people have a feeling that these activities are not good and hence bring it to the public

Big corporations like Apple, Johnson and Johnson, and Windows are home to thousands of employees. No matter what the subject is, every once and a while, they are instances where something happens that no one wants to let out. In big companies or small companies, cover-ups occur many times. Sometimes, those cover-ups of information include bribes that have been given and illegal movements within the company. For instance, when Volkswagen, a German car company, used a software that altered pollution tests. This criminal act could have caused serious environmental issues

Jackson and Raftos (1997) referred to whistle blowing as an avenue of last resort. Employees find themselves in these situations when the authorities at their organisations have failed to take actions on reported issues affecting that organisation. Wimot (2000) likened whistleblowing to a spectrum. At one end of this spectrum whistleblowing would only cause minimal pain and scars on the stakeholders and organisation while on the other end is the worst scenario where the whistleblowing effects are turbulent and often experienced to be negative to all those involved (ibid).

A person who uncovered any kind of details or facts that is unlawful, illicit, criminal, dishonest or incorrect within any corporation is known as whistleblower. A whistleblower has two options to bring information or accusation to surface by internally or externally. Internally, a whistleblower can lead his/her statement to awareness of other people within the accused corporation. Externally, a whistle-blower can also contact a third party outside of the corporation such as media.

Many employees seem to be fired for reasons that are either untrue or for wanting, to tell the truth about a business. One way to prevent these types of terminations from happening is to have the employee’s supervisor give a thorough explanation and reasoning for this employee’s termination to that supervisor’s boss. However, this may decrease some unethical management; there are still organizations that do not mind laying someone off unethically for the betterment of that organization’s profit. Another problem was about verbally harassing and threatening of an employee to sign an agreement or contract to keep unethical bosses from losing profits. This problem’s solution completely lies within the boss’s attitude toward this employee and the interactions they have with one another. The only way to keep an eye on this is for the board members are to get reviews from the subordinates about their boss and to keep that knowledge completely anonymous and

this is where the behavior is examined and changed by using reprimands or retraining. Finally,

The Whistle-blower Policy is a concept that organizations encourage their employees and external clients to report any improper activities such as fraud, corruption, or any other illegal actions. (UC Berkeley, 2017) The Whistle-blower policy is from the 1960s, but it is nor effective policy.((Santa University, 2017) Most of the employees cannot raise their issues. Usually, the problem is concealed rather than solve, due to the lake of protection of privacy of whistle-blower, until the authorization

In bureaucracy there is a separation of powers, checks, and balances, these internal checks are required because it brings accountability within the bureaucracy. There are four main types of mechanisms that can be put in place, whistleblowing, law judges, senior executive services and the representatives from the demographic. However, these different mechanisms have limited effect on the bureaucracy. Whistleblowing is one of the most effective mechanisms of accountability because superiors are reported on when they partake in any unethical behavior that put the government in a detriment. However, whistleblowing is not easy to do, even though there is a protection act in place for whoever partake in it but the case must be thoroughly be investigated

The concept of whistleblowing in modern days differs from citizens to public servants. From citizens’ perspective, this action is perceived positively because it promotes the public good, and for most public servants, this action is perceived negatively because it damages the reputation of the organization and can ultimately jeopardize national security.

Some however see it as an act of disloyalty to the employer who is the means of the employee’s livelihood. Duska argues in his article of “Whistleblowing and Employee loyalty” that is no obligation to loyalty because a company is not a person, it’s an instrument with a specific purpose of making a profit. He defines a loyalty relationship as

When a person feels that something illegal or ethically wrong is happening in their place of work, what can they do? That person has the right to go to their administration about the acts that are occurring. (GAP) This action would be called whistle-blowing. Furthermore, whistle-blowers would be protected by law from repercussions from coming forward about the ethical or illegal issue. (Hallman, 2012) The organization that protects accountants and other financial professionals within the field of business is the IMA. For example, one case involving a whistle-blower within the accounting field was in 1989.

In summary, Wen and Chen established four hypotheses in addressing their beliefs on the positive relationships between various factors, including ethical leadership, moral identity, power distance orientation, and the intention of whistleblowing. The purpose of the study is to survey the degree of positive influence on subordinates concerning his or her pre-established moral character and mentality on the distribution of power, in reaction to ethical leaders (Wen & Chen, 2016). Thus, it implies that a person in authority who is unethical will likely foster a negative working environment, which in turn will promote the acceptance of immoral behavior from all employees.

Research speaks out that the person who blows the whistle is basically a trusted loyal employee. Also indicates chances that the person is a role model employee. It is the employees who have the responsibility to act ethically when he comes across evidence of such an unethical activity being done in the organization.