This article suggests that the introduction of employment protection rights for whistleblowers has implications for the way in which trust and loyalty should be viewed at the workplace. In particular, it is argued that the very existence of legislative provisions in the United Kingdom reinforces the notion that whistleblowing should not be regarded as either deviant or disloyal behaviour. Thus, the internal reporting of concerns can be seen as an act of trust and loyalty in drawing the employer's attention to (...) wrongdoing. Equally, external whistleblowing may result from a worker's belief that he or she also has a loyalty to the wider society. Given that the interests of employees do not necessarily coincide with those of their employer and that whistleblowers sometimes suffer reprisals, the author concludes that it is inappropriate to impose a contractual duty to report concerns. Instead, employers should endeavour to promote a culture of openness and create confidence in the mechanisms they provide for whistleblowing. (shrink)

The importance of clarity in the effective embedment of corporate ethical cultures is well established. But if we are concerned with the efficacy of corporate cultures, we must also be concerned with how clearly they are communicated. The main way in which ethical cultures are communicated to employees is in ethical texts, such as codes of conduct and ethical policies and procedures. If these ethical texts do not achieve clarity, they risk undermining rather than embedding the ethical cultures that they (...) seek to document. But, can ethical texts achieve clarity? This article builds on Kaptein’s Corporate Ethical Virtues Model by extending the corporate ethical virtue of clarity to the formal context of ethical texts and offers valuable insights into how and why clarity is enabled or obstructed in such texts. A practical tool, the ethical clarity Framework, is developed for the analysis and mapping of clarity in ethical texts and then applied in the exemplar setting of whistleblowing texts in the UK banking sector. The findings suggest that the drivers for inconsistency and ambiguity in ethical texts lie in the difficulty of naming and framing ethical concepts, incoherence in the external landscape, and the need to satisfy the competing interests of multiple actors. The article concludes that ethical texts may not be able to achieve clarity and should, perhaps, not attempt to do so. (shrink)

Two Boeing 737-MAX passenger planes crashed in October 2018 and March 2019, suspending all 737-MAX aircraft. The crashes put Boeing’s corporate practices and culture under the spotlight. The main objective of this paper is to use the case of Boeing to highlight the importance of efficient employee grievance redressal mechanisms and an independent external regulator. The methodology adopted is a qualitative analysis of statements of various whistleblowers and Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stakeholders. It suggests that employee feedback (...) flowing up the chain of command should be more flexible and dealt with more seriousness. It recommends that companies adopt a cooling-off period or a lifetime restriction for employees who have gone through the revolving door between regulators and the industry. The Boeing 737-MAX case, which emphasizes the ethical obligations of the job, can offer value to engineers, engineering educators, managers, ombudsmen, and human resource professionals. (shrink)

In this article, we outline a unique conceptual framework connecting legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995), theories of corporate responsibility (Brummer, 1991), and levels of organizational moral development based on Kohlberg's (1971) moral development stages. In addition, based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) categories, we found empirical support for our framework, by content analyzing Fortune 500 corporate citizenship reports from four different industries (i.e., chemicals, motor vehicle/auto parts, pharmaceutical, and utilities), at three data points (i.e., 2002, 2007, and 2012). Our analysis indicates (...) that motor vehicle/auto parts and chemicals industries are at a higher developmental level, and portray moral legitimacy along with social demandingness corporate responsibility in recent years; while the pharmaceutical and utilities sectors are at a lower developmental level, showing signs of pragmatic legitimacy, alongside classical and stakeholder corporate responsibility strategies. This article contributes to the current organizational moral development literature by developing and finding empirical support of a conceptual framework of organizational moral development, legitimacy, and corporate responsibility. In particular, our findings provide a deeper understanding of the differences in moral development levels across four focal industries over a 10‐year timespan. (shrink)

This paper explores the possible impact of the recent legal developments on organizational whistleblowing on the autonomy and responsibility of whistleblowers. In the past thirty years numerous pieces of legislation have been passed to offer protection to whistleblowers from retaliation for disclosing organisational wrongdoing. An area that remains uncertain in relation to whistleblowing and its related policies in organisations, is whether these policies actually increase the individualisation of work, allowing employees to behave in accordance with their conscience and in line (...) with societal expectations or whether they are another management tool to control employees and protect organisations from them. The assumptions of whistleblower protection with regard to moral autonomy are examined in order to clarify the purpose of whistleblower protection at work. The two extreme positions in the discourse of whistleblowing are that whistleblowing legislation and policies either aim to enable individual responsibility and moral autonomy at work, or they aim to protect organisations by allowing them to control employees and make them liable for ethics at work. (shrink)

The increasing challenges faced by organizations have led to numerous studies examining human resource management (HRM) practices, organizational ethical climates and sustainability. Despite this, little has been done to explore the possible relationships between these three topics. This study, based on a probabilistic sample of 6,000 employees from six European countries, analyses how HRM practices with the aim of developing organizational ethics influence the benevolent, principled and egoistic ethical climates that exist within organizations, while also investigating the possible moderating role (...) played by their employees’ perception of corporate sustainability. Findings demonstrate that ability-enhancing practices (i.e. recruiting, selection and training) and opportunity-enhancing practices (i.e. job design, industrial relationships and employee involvement) improve benevolent and principled organizational ethical climates, while motivation-enhancing practices (i.e. performance management, compensation and incentives) rather than being related to these organizational ethical climates, are linked to the egoistic climate. In addition, the perceptions of the company’s employees in terms of corporate sustainability moderate these relationships, by reinforcing the positive relationships of ability-enhancing and motivation-enhancing HRM practices in terms of benevolent and principled ethical climates and by reducing the positive relationships between motivation-enhancing practices and egoistic climate. Specific implications for HRM research, teaching and practice are then advanced and discussed. (shrink)

In recent times, whistleblowing has become one of the most popularly debated issues of business ethics. Popular discussion has coincided with the institutionalisation of whistleblowing via legal and administrative practices, supported by the emergence of academic research in the field. However, the public practice and knowledge that has subsequently developed appears to construct a dichotomy of whistleblowing/silence ; that is, an employee elects either to ‘blow the whistle’ on organisational wrongdoing, or remain silent. We argue that this public transcript of (...) whistleblowing/silence overshadows the importance of continuing research into alternative (individual or collective) employee behaviour. Drawing on original research with a financial services organisation, our research uncovers a dissenting discourse that operates through implicit communication, such as codes, sarcasm and jokes. We suggest that this hidden transcript offers significant opportunities for employees to act ethically, and offers the potential to sustain an ethical organisational culture. (shrink)

This article argues that whilst the idea of whistleblowing as a positive duty to do good or to prevent harm may be defendable, legislating that duty is not feasible. We develop our argument by identifying rights and duties involved in whistleblowing as two clusters: one of justice and one of benevolence. Legislative arguments have evolved to cover the justice issues and the tendency exists of extending rights and duties into the realm of benevolence. This article considers the problematic assumptions and (...) implications of whistleblowing as a positive duty, by examining the extent to which the Good Samaritan argument holds with regard to whistleblowing. We argue that three criteria necessary for whistleblowing as a legally enforceable positive duty are not met, namely that we need to be able to (1) specify who should know what, (2) minimize the risk to the whistleblower and (3) adequately deal with mistaken concerns being raised. (shrink)

This empirical study explores the characteristics and degree of implementation of so-called ethics hotlines in transnational companies (TNCs), which allow employees to present allegations of wrongdoing and ethical dilemmas, as well as to report concerns. Ethics hotlines have not received much attention in literature; therefore, this paper aims to fill that gap. Through the analysis of conduct/ethics codes and the compliance programs of the top 150 transnational companies ranked by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) ( 2007 (...) ), we carry out a descriptive and taxonomic study of these companies’ ethics hotlines. We analyze: (1) the basic characteristics of the mechanism, (2) the degree of exigency and the provision of safeguards, (3) the matters reported and the systems for reporting, and (4) the relationships between hotlines and economic characteristics of the firm. Our study compares financial and nonfinancial TNCs as well as North American and European TNCs. Our results show that many firms (especially from North America) have established these procedures. We also find some disparities between European and North American ethics hotlines that suggest differences in the orientation of the procedures. (shrink)

In recent years, issues of childhood obesity, unsafe toys, and child labor have raised the question of corporate responsibilities to children. However, business impacts on children are complex, multi-faceted, and frequently overlooked by senior managers. This article reports on a systematic analysis of the reputational landscape constructed by the media, corporations, and non-government organizations around business responsibilities to children. A content analysis methodology is applied to a sample of more than 350 relevant accounts during a 5-year period. We identify seven (...) core responsibilities that are then used to provide a framework for enabling businesses to map their range of impacts on children. We set out guidelines for how to identify and manage the firm’s strategic responsibilities in this arena, and identify the␣constraints that corporations face in meeting such responsibilities. (shrink)

Until now, there has been no theoretical foundation that explains why organizations implement whistle-blowing systems. By understanding whistle-blowing systems as an instrument that is desired by society, the legitimacy theory could be transferred to the whistle-blowing concept. A survey of German managers shows that legitimacy theory may be supported. Further insights into legitimacy theory are given by the motivation for the design of the implemented systems. The survey shows that, in particular, the implementation of external whistle-blowing systems is seemingly not (...) driven by desired effectiveness. This supports legitimacy theory, since it reveals that external systems are symbolic rather than substantive systems. However, the results do not hold for internal whistle-blowing systems because the implementation of internal systems is ostensibly driven by power theories. The results are interesting for the planned statutory whistleblower protection as they reveal a partially restrained attitude toward whistle-blowing. Whistle-blowing systems are not effective if management is not convinced of their benefits. (shrink)

Whistle blowing programs have been central to numerous government, legislative, and regulatory reform efforts in recent years. To protect investors, corporate boards have instituted numerous measures to promote whistle blowing. Despite significant whistle blowing incentives, few individuals blow the whistle when presented with the opportunity. Instead, individuals often remain fallaciously silent and, in essence, become passive fraudsters themselves. Using the fraud triangle and models of moral behavior, we model and analyze fallacious silence and identify factors that may motivate an individual (...) to rationalize fallacious silence. We use a survey of graduate accounting students to test hypothesized factors that contribute to fallacious silence rationalizations in an academic setting. We find evidence that the ability to rationalize fallacious silence is related to community influences and personal traits such as awareness and moral competence. (shrink)

Putting measures in place to prevent wrongdoing in organizations is important, but detecting and correcting wrongdoing are also vital. Employees who detect wrongdoing should, therefore, be encouraged to respond in a manner that supports corrective action. This article examines the influence of the ethical culture of organizations on employee responses to observed wrongdoing. Different dimensions of ethical culture are related to different types of intended responses. The findings show that several dimensions of ethical culture were negatively related to intended inaction (...) and external whistleblowing and positively related to intended confrontation, reporting to management, and calling an ethics hotline. (shrink)

There is an increasing recognition of the need to provide ways for people to raise concerns about suspected wrongdoing by promoting internal policies and procedures which offer proper safeguards to actual and potential whistleblowers. Many organisations in both the public and private sectors now have such measures and these display a wide variety of operating modalities: in-house or outsourced, anonymous/confidential/identified, multi or single tiered, specified or open subject matter, etc. As a result of this development, a number of guidelines and (...) policy documents have been produced by authoritative bodies. This article reviews the following five documents from a management perspective, the first two deal with the principles upon which legislation might be based and the others describing good management practice: the Council of Europe Resolution 1729 (COER); Transparency International ‘Recommended Principles for Whistleblowing Legislation’ (TI); European Union Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Opinion (EUWP); International Chamber of Commerce ‘Guidelines on Whistleblowing’ (ICC); and the British Standards Institute ‘Whistleblowing arrangements Code of Practice 2008 (BSI). (shrink)

In order to provide an effective whistle-blowing system, it is expected that companies would provide employees with a high level of disclosure regarding the whistle-blowing process. This study investigates variation in the extent of whistle-blowing disclosures. As a measure of whistle-blowing implementation, this study further examines the provision of a hotline channel. The results suggest that the extent of whistle-blowing disclosures is positively associated with the permissibility of anonymous reporting and organisational support for whistle-blowing, the number of external directors on (...) the audit committee, and the existence of concentrated shareholdings. The mere existence of whistle-blowing disclosures could simply be symbolic. The findings also indicate a greater likelihood of the provision of hotlines when companies are larger in size, have a higher level of current inventory, are cross-listed in the US, and permit anonymous reporting. (shrink)

In November 2019 the EU Whistleblower Directive came into force. Whistleblowing has been described as a human right and a freedom fundamental to democracy. But it is not always straightforward to understand concrete cases of reporting wrongdoing in terms of abstract political philosophy. This paper uses a discussion between Berlin and Skinner about what negative freedom is, as a theoretical framework to understand the struggles of a campaigning platform of trade unions and civil society organizations, in the coming about of (...) the EU Whistleblower Directive. The paper is empirically based on a document analysis of two Resolutions in the European Parliament, the European Commission’s proposal text, the approved text in the European Parliament, and messages on the listserv of the campaigning platform between February 2017 and April 2019. The paper provides insights on how whistleblowing freedom relates to public interest and autonomy. (shrink)

This article uses a sample of 3076 employees working in the USA to examine the relationship between the frequency of unethical behavior that employees observe in their organization and their intention to whistleblow. The results confirm the expected curvilinear relationship based on the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct. This relationship is a combination of a diminishing negative relationship between the frequency of observed unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow internally and a linear positive relationship between the frequency of observed (...) unethical behavior and the intention to whistleblow externally. The beliefs of employees about how supportive their management is when handling whistleblowing reports moderates the relationship between the frequency of unethical behavior employees observe and their intention to whistleblow. (shrink)