Discussions of whistleblowing and employee loyalty usually assume either that the concept of loyalty is irrelevant to the issue or, more commonly, that whistleblowing involves a moral choice in which the loyalty that an employee owes an employer comes to be pitted against the employee''s responsibility to serve public interest. I argue that both these views are mistaken and propose a third view which sees whistleblowing as entirely compatible with employee loyalty.

Does a pharmacist have a right to refuse to fill certain prescriptions? In this paper, I examine cases in which an employee might refuse to do something that is part of his or her job description. I will argue that in some of these cases, an employee does have a right of refusal and in other cases an employee does not. In those cases where the employee does not have a right of refusal, I argue that the refusals (if repeated) (...) are just cause for termination of employment. I argue that there are moral principles that support the different outcomes in the cases under consideration. I turn to pharmacy cases at the end of the paper and argue that they are analogous to cases where an employee does not have a right of refusal and thus fall under the principle that refusing to fill birth control prescriptions constitutes just cause for termination. (shrink)

Denne artikkelen innledes med en forutsetning: at dagens samfunn er sterkt avhengig av ekspertsystemer som utvikles og forvaltes av profesjoner og deres medlemmer. Profesjonsutøvelse må derfor forankres i faglig kunnskap og ikke minst i en reflektert etisk bevissthet om profesjoners samfunnsoppdrag. Med dette som utgangspunkt påpekes det i denne artikkelen at høyere utdanning har ansvar for å utdanne kommende profesjonsutøvere med moralsk handlingsberedskap. I lys av dette gjennomgås nasjonal og internasjonal forskning på læring av yrkesetikk innenfor ulike profesjonsutdanninger og erfaringer (...) med yrkesetikk i praksis. Funn fra disse studiene viser at mange nyutdannede ikke opplever å være godt nok forberedt på yrkesetiske dilemmaer. Det indikerer at høyere utdanning ikke jobber med læring av yrkesetikk på en tilstrekkelig måte. Andre funn viser at i profesjonsutdanninger der det har vært jobbet systematisk med moralske spørsmål relatert til autentiske case, synes studenter å utvikle en mer bevisst yrkesetisk handlingsberedskap. Det konkluderes med at empirisk forskning bidrar med verdifull kunnskap om sentrale og kritiske forutsetninger og faktorer vi må ta hensyn til om målet er å danne grunnlag for en reflektert yrkesetisk handlingskompetanse for et konfliktfylt arbeidsliv. Systematisk utdanning i moralsk resonnement, deltagelse i praksis, utvikling av et etisk språk og en bevissthet om profesjonsmoralens forankring, er sentralt. Vi trenger imidlertid mer empirisk forskning på forholdet mellom det normative mandat og den enkelte profesjonsutøvers forståelse av yrkesetikk og handling i praksis. Det vil kunne øke vår innsikt i hvordan høyere utdanning kan hjelpe fremtidige profesjonsutøvere til moralsk handlingsberedskap. (shrink)

Based on recordings of naturalistic interaction, this study explores how a case of mundane whistleblowing unfolds in real time. In the analyzed recordings, a teacher instructs five students to engage in self- and peer-assessment. A few minutes into the session, one of the students indirectly accuses his peers of staging a cover-up. This whistleblowing action is analyzed in detail, but the main analytical focus is on the conversational strategies employed in response to it. These strategies — for example, emotional displays, (...) the undermining of credibility, fabricated accusatory detailing, covert silencing, puzzle work, and threats — were used both to repair the potential damage of the whistleblowing and to punish the whistleblower. More overt and hostile strategies were used after the formal assessment was over and the teacher had left the students to themselves. Students’ participation in the studied type of activities can be seen to develop their capacity to transform social relationships, to broaden their notions of peer loyalty, and to enhance their sense of social structure. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhistleblowing has gained increasing media attention over the past 40 years, as incidents of abuse and wrongdoing associated with businesses, religious institutions, the media and politics...

Public relations helps an organisation and its publics adapt mutually to each other. However, this does not mean that the profession is value neutral or anything goes. There will be cases where professionals have to make discretionary ethical decisions and negotiate their roles and responsibilities, especially when faced with novel or difficult issues. In this conceptual paper, we describe how the notion of professional role morality not only shapes the individual struggles that practitioners endure but also highlights the organisational structures (...) that foster or shun ethics in the decision-making process. Thus we provide a means of assessing professional action that balances the urge to become a hired gun who simply abdicates personal responsibility and completely adopts the employer’s moral viewpoint on the one hand, and moral torpedoes who rely exclusively on their personal views without any concern for wider implications on the other. Investigating role morality as played out in public relations is important because it may explain why practitioners often find themselves at odds with their best moral judgments. Here we present five fictionalised narratives to illustrate the conceptual issues and highlight the most significant moral distinctions that have practical consequences for both the theory and practice of public relations. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the 1986 Amendments to the False Claims Act of 1863, which offers whistle-blowers financial rewards for disclosing fraud committed against the U.S. government. This law provides an opportunity to examine underlying assumptions about the morality of whistle-blowing and to consider the merits of increased reliance on whistle-blowing to protect the public interest. The law seems open to a number of moral objections, most notably that it exerts a morally corrupting influence on whistle-blowers. We answer these objections (...) and argue that the law is not objectionable on these grounds. Since there are no compelling moral objections to the law, it is appropriate and acceptable to judge the law in terms of its economic costs and benefits. We assess the most salient of these and conclude that the benefits outweigh the costs. We suggest that a mechanism similar to the Act should be considered for protecting stockholders’ interests in the private sector. We conclude by making several proposals for improving the existing legislation. (shrink)

Discussions of whistleblowing whether in academic literature or in more popular media have tended to very one-sided assessments of the moral worth of the act. Indeed, much of the current literature concentrates on psychological or managerial aspects of whistleblowing while taking for granted this or that moral position or eschewing any normative commitment on the question. The purpose of this article is firstly to reemphasise the importance and complexity of the normative foundations of whistleblowing acts; and secondly, through a moral (...) philosophical analysis of the component decisions that make up any act of whistleblowing, to contribute to a more balanced and less polarised treatment of the topic. It is argued that the polarisation of views on the topic is in part due to a failure to decompose the act of whistleblowing into a number of inevitable component moral decisions leading up to the act. It is furthermore argued on the basis of the analysis that it is impossible to state a priori as a matter of general principle that whistleblowing is always morally right or morally wrong . The article will close with a reflection on the degree to which the weighing up of good and bad in the act of whistleblowing differs sharply among cultures; and with a conjecture as to a possible relation to a people's history which may serve as a pointer to interesting future empirical research on the topic. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is recognized as an important function in promoting scientific integrity, and there is a recognized need to protect whistleblowers. There is not much information available in the literature about scientific whistleblowing. Because it appears that frequently scientific misconduct is uncovered by a whistleblower, it is useful to obtain more information about the activity. This paper is about whistleblowing from the perspective of the person blowing the whistle. Information about a few selected cases of whistleblowing is presented in an attempt (...) to augment the experiential aspect of the activity. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the 1986 Amendments to the False Claims Act of 1863, which offers whistle-blowers financial rewards for disclosing fraud committed against the U.S. government. This law provides an opportunity to examine underlying assumptions about the morality of whistle-blowing and to consider the merits of increased reliance on whistle-blowing to protect the public interest. The law seems open to a number of moral objections, most notably that it exerts a morally corrupting influence on whistle-blowers. We answer these objections (...) and argue that the law is not objectionable on these grounds. Since there are no compelling moral objections to the law, it is appropriate and acceptable to judge the law in terms of its economic costs and benefits. We assess the most salient of these and conclude that the benefits outweigh the costs. We suggest that a mechanism similar to the Act should be considered for protecting stockholders' interests in the private sector. We conclude by making several proposals for improving the existing legislation. (shrink)

Business ethics has emerged in recent years as a field of significant scholarly endeavour. Particularly well documented is the existence of ethical conflict at work and the reported inseparability of business decisions and moral consequences. However, to date, the majority of studies have been conducted in the American business context.This paper examines the concept of ethical conflict as experienced by employees in the Australian context. According to a sample of Western Australian managers, ethical conflicts at work do occur — with (...) relative frequency. Of considerable concern is the high incidence of cases where the demands of superiors are deemed to be the cause of this conflict. This finding is particularly disturbing as superiors are also the primary influence on employee ethical decision making. It would see that the ethics role models are also the instigators of unethical behaviour. (shrink)

This study examined experimentally the effect of retaliation strength and accounting students’ level of moral reasoning, on their propensity to blow the whistle (PBW) when faced with a serious wrongdoing. Fifty-one senior accounting students enrolled in an auditing course offered by a large New Zealand university participated in the study. Participants responded to three hypothetical whistle-blowing scenarios and completed an instrument that measured moral reasoning (Welton et al., 1994, Accounting Education . International Journal (Toronto, Ont.) 3 (1), 35–50) on one (...) of two conditions – i.e., strong or weak retaliation for whistle-blowing. Consistent with the results of Arnold and Ponemon (1991, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 10 , 1–15) this study found that the strength of retaliation and participants’ moral reasoning level positively affected their PBW. Unlike results reported in Arnold and Ponemon (1991, Auditing; A Journal of Practice and Theory 10 , 1–15) a significant interaction effect of moral reasoning level and retaliation on participants’ PBW was not found. However, results showed that a participant’s gender has a significant effect on the relationship between his or her moral reasoning level and PBW. These results support the need to improve ethical awareness through accounting education and to increase protection for whistle-blowing (Miceli 2004, Journal of Management Inquiry 13 , 364–366). Furthermore, many participants found it difficult to take a stand when serious wrongdoing is discovered. Therefore, policymakers must exercise caution when placing heavy reliance on whistle-blowing, especially when whistle-blower protection processes are complex and not easily accessible, and processes to facilitate whistle-blowing may vary substantially between public and private sector organizations (Scholtens, 2003, Review of the operation of the Protected Disclosures Act 2000: Report to the Minister of State Services ). (shrink)

This article uses two recent books on whistleblowing authored by political philosophers, to suggest that what political philosophy can contribute to the whistleblowing debate are notions of public interest that can help to enable and delineate responsibilities and protection of different actors. Whilst it is acknowledged that these recent works on whistleblowing offer a welcome articulation of the business ethics scholarship into that of political philosophy, it fails to deliver on its potential contribution. The argumentation proceeds along three objections, (1) (...) use of bad cases, (2) lack of new insights, and (3) conservative positioning. (shrink)

The main research focus of the sociology of business ethics is on (i) the moral foundations of people's behaviour, both within and outside the business context, (ii) how compatible or contradictory these behaviours are and (iii) how stable a society or component of a society would be if self-interest is the main governing principle, without being constrained by moral discipline. This entails providing accurate descriptions and explanations of ethical situations. Whistle-blowing research is used to examine the methodological challenges of business (...) ethics researchers. The analysis demonstrates the importance of an integrated multi-strategy approach that would facilitate an investigation of the motivations and decision processes of individual actors in the larger social context, especially within the organisation. (shrink)

Current empirical studies of moral behavior of healthcare professionals are almost entirely focused on self-reports, usually collected under the assumption that an ethical disposition characterizes individuals across various contexts. It is well known, however, that individuals adjust their behavior to what they see being done by those in their peer group. That presents a methodological challenge to traditional research within a community of peers because the behavior of each individual is both the result of norms and a contributor to the (...) norms of others. Computer simulations can be used to address this methodological challenge. A Markov replicator model that runs on an Excel spreadsheet was used to investigate a community with four agent types in the dental community: devious practitioners, ethical practitioners who avoid involvement in the poor ethics of others, ethical practitioners who accept it as part of their professional responsibility to challenge colleagues who act unprofessionally, and those who enforce ethical standards. A panel of leaders in the profession independently estimated parameters for the model and criteria for a possible distribution of agent types in the community. The simulation converged on distributions of the agent types that were very similar to the expectations of the panel. The simulation suggests the following characteristics of such moral communities: The structure of such communities is robust across a wide distribution. It appears that reduction in unethical behavior is more sensitive to the way ethical practitioners interact with each other than to sanctions the enforcement community imposes on unethical practitioners, and that large external interventions will be short lived. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical dilemma of conflicting loyalties found in whistleblowing. Central to this dilemma is the internal/external disclosure dichotomy; disclosure of organisational wrongdoing to an external recipient is seen as disloyal, whilst disclosure to an internal recipient is seen as loyal. Understanding how the organisation and society have dealt with these problems over the last 30 years is undertaken through an analysis of Vandekerckhove’s project, which seeks to place the normative legitimisations of whistleblowing legislation and organisational whistleblowing policies (...) within a globalisation semantic able to contain this conflict between society and the organisation. This project fails, it is argued, because of Vandekerckhove’s particular understanding of the organisation as an autopoietic system, i.e. an operationally closed system. A case is made to understand organisations as complex systems, i.e. operationally open systems. Critical Complexity theory sees the identities of systems and components as coterminous. In the context of the organisation, this means that the identities of the corporation and its corporate members arise and die together. The whistleblower’s disclosure reconfigures the organisation by forcing the organisation to open up and make its boundaries flexible, making the designation ‘internal’ or ‘external’ to the organisation, and, therefore, who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing, flexible. The organisation is restrained from retailing against the whistleblower, because its identities are coterminous. Furthermore, as the disclosure cannot be categorically defined as either internal or external, the question of whether an external disclosure can qualify as an act of organisational loyalty becomes moot. (shrink)