Organisational WhistleblowingPolicies Making Employees.docx

Organisational Whistleblowing
Policies: Making Employees
Responsible or Liable?
Eva E. Tsahuridu
Wim Vandekerckhove
ABSTRACT. This paper explores the possible impact of
the recent legal developments on organizational whistle-
blowing on the autonomy and responsibility of whistle-
blowers. In the past thirty years numerous pieces of
legislation have been passed to offer protection to whis-
tleblowers 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 individuali-
sation of work, allowing employees to behave in accor-
dance 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 whistle-
blowing 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.
KEY WORDS: whistleblowing, moral autonomy,
ethical distance, moral agency
Introduction
The increased focus on ethics and ethical behaviour
in organisations has led to greater concerns about
whistleblowers and their protection. In the early
1970s, Ralph Nader was the most prominent rep-
resentative of a growing movement which aimed to

offer legal protection to whistleblowers. Nader et al.
(1972, p. vii) define whistleblowing as ‘‘an act of a
man or woman who, believing that the public
interest overrides the interest of the organisation he
serves, blows the whistle that the organisation is
involved in corrupt, illegal, fraudulent or harmful
activity’’. Nader’s activism pointed to a conflict
between the ethos of the ‘organisation man’ and
growing public criticism of organisations’ separation
from society’s ethics. In this sense, the call for
whistleblower protection must be seen as an expo-
nent of the call for more accountability of organi-
sations to society.
Research on whistleblowing covers its psycho-
logical and social dimensions (e.g. Miceli and Near,
1984, 1985, 1991), legal aspects (e.g. Miceli and
Near, 1992; Miceli et al., 1999), cultural aspects of
the phenomena (e.g. Park et al., 2005; Rashid and

Ho, 2003; Tavakoli et al., 2003), conceptual delin-
eations (e.g. Elliston, 1982; Jubb, 1999) organisa-
tional responses to legislation (e.g. Hassink et al.,
forthcoming; Near and Dworkin, 1998) and analysis
of the different moral arguments used for defending
whistleblowing protection (e.g. Vandekerckhove,
2006). There is, however, no consensus whether
whistleblowing policies in organisations actually in-
crease the individualisation of work, allowing
employees to behave in accordance with their con-
science and in line with societal expectations (e.g.
Berry, 2004), or whether they are another manage-
ment tool to control employees and protect organi-
sations from them (e.g. Alford, 2001; Martin, 2003).
The increased protection of whistleblowers that
legislation offers in the U.S., has been challenged by
an increase in court cases where judges are asked to
enforce secrecy agreements against whistleblowers

(Dworkin and Callahan, 1998). Such agreements,
Dworkin and Callahan argue, offer employers extra
protection. An important aspect of this protection
offered to employers is that employees are required to
Journal of Business Ethics (2008) 82:107–118 � Springer 2007
DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9565-3
first report wrongdoing internally. In Europe, where
discussions about whistleblowing legislation have
recently commenced in most parliaments and cor-
porations have started to draw up and implement
organisational whistleblowing policies in order to
comply with the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, diverse stances
have been adopted regarding the obligatory or op-
tional status of disclosing organisational wrongdoing.
Commenting on the U.S. context, Tippett (2006)
notes that state and federal law requires some pro-
fessions to report suspected child abuse and that New

Jersey and Florida require attorneys to reveal a client’s
intent to commit a future crime, but that overall
statutes that force employees to blow the whistle are
exceedingly rare. With regard to Europe, Hassink
et al. (2007) comment that the majority of the
European organisational whistleblowing policies
adopted a tone that was ‘‘at least moderately
authoritative’’, with codes speaking of ‘‘a require-
ment or duty to report violations’’, and employees
who ‘must’, ‘should’ or ‘are expected to’ report
them. More importantly, Hassink et al. found that in
30 percent of the policies reviewed, ‘‘it was made
clear that failing to report a violation (remaining si-
lent about a breach or concealing information about
one) is a violation in itself.’’ In France, the ‘Com-
mission Nationale de L’Informatique et des Libertés’
(CNIL), in its recommendation dated 10 November
2005, on the implementation of whistleblowing

policies, cites a letter from the French Minister for
Labour and Social Affairs stating that ‘‘the use of
whistleblowing systems must not be compulsory, but
be merely encouraged,’’ and that a compulsory
reporting requirement would be out of proportion
with its objective (CNIL, 2005). Similarly, the Bel-
gian privacy commission in 2005 issued a recom-
mendation stating that whistleblowing schemes may
not impose mandatory reporting on employees, and
therefore, use of the reporting scheme must be op-
tional (Privacy Commission, 2006). Meanwhile, the
whistleblowing policy of the European Commission,
implemented after the Cresson crisis, maintains a
mandatory disclosure procedure (Art 22a of the Staff
Regulations of Officials of the European Commu-
nities, see OLAF, 2005).
Recent developments at work such as the changes
in the employment relationship, the psychological

contract to short term, no long-term commitment
and life long employment (Sennett, 1998) and the
extinction of the organisation man (Werhane, 1999),
who would override other concerns for the benefit
of the organisation, may also affect whistleblowing,
its purpose and process. This matter is part of a
bigger web of questions that relate to ethical
behaviour at work, raised in the organisational
context. They include the issues of moral agency,
personhood of persons and organisations, autonomy
and responsibility (Tsahuridu and McKenna, 2000).
This article outlines the developments in whis-
tleblowing legislation and organisational whistle-
blowing policies. It examines the assumptions of
whistleblower protection with regard to moral
autonomy, in order to clarify the purpose of whis-
tleblower protection on people at work. The clari-
fication of the purpose of whistleblowing legislation

and related organisational policies is important be-
cause it will inform the appropriate means to achieve
the protection of whistleblowers. The two extreme
positions in the discourse on whistleblowing appear
to be that whistleblowing legislation and organisa-
tional policies either aim to enable individual
responsibility and moral autonomy at work, or
protect organisations by allowing them to control
employees and make them liable for ethics at work.
It is, however, possible for such policies to enable
both moral autonomy and responsibility of
employees and the protection of organisations in
varying degrees. We believe that insight into the
assumptions about autonomy and individuation at
work underlying the call for whistleblower protec-
tion is beneficial for successfully developing and
implementing whistleblower legislation and organi-
sational whistleblowing policies.

This article briefly outlines the developments in
the research, legislation and scope of whistleblowing
policies. It examines how moral agency and auton-
omy are conceptually linked, and develops the rea-
soning for the notion of moral responsibility in
organisations, by employing the notion of ‘ethical
distance’ (Bauman, 1993; Mellema, 2003). It then
develops the impact of whistleblowing policies on
ethical distance and moral autonomy. Finally, the
article develops the thesis that, while whistleblowing
policies can find their justification as an organisa-
tional mechanism enhancing the moral autonomy of
people in an organisational context, the effect of
implementing these policies is susceptible to turning
responsibility into liability for people at work.
108 Eva E. Tsahuridu and Wim Vandekerckhove
Whistleblowing and whistleblowing legislation

An act constitutes whistleblowing if it has the fol-
lowing characteristics: First of all, it must involve an
intentional disclosure of information to which the
whistleblower has privileged access. In general,
employees have such a privileged access. They know
what is going on at work, and specific jobs entail
handling specific information about what an orga-
nisation is doing. Not only permanent, core
employees but also temporary or contract staff and
some self-employed workers have privileged access
to information. Second, the disclosed information
must be about a perceived malpractice or wrong-
doing in the organisation, or under the responsibility
of the organisation. Third, the disclosure’s aim is to
rectify that malpractice or wrongdoing.
While some authors restrict the term whistle-
blowing to concerns that are raised outside the
organisation (Chiasson et al., 1995; Jubb, 1999),

many others assert that the term can be used for any
disclosure about wrongdoing in an organisation that
does not follow the normal hierarchical lines
(Callahan et al., 2002; Kaptein, 2002; Van-
dekerckhove and Commers, 2004; Vinten, 1994).
Miceli and Near (1992) have argued that empirically,
there is a conceptual distinction to be made between
internal and external disclosure because internal
disclosure commonly precedes external disclosure.
However, both internal and external disclosures of
organisational wrongdoing are consequences of a
concern being voiced by an insider aimed at recti-
fying the wrongdoing.
The assertion that whistleblowers are ‘rats’ or
‘sneaks’ has been refuted by empirical research on
the psychological and sociological dimensions of
whistleblowing. Research (see e.g. Chiu, 2003;
Dozier and Miceli, 1985; Miceli and Near, 1984,

1989, 1991) shows that employees who have blown
the whistle are loyal to the organisational goals and
would rather have the wrongdoing corrected by
raising the issue inside their organisation than cause a
scandal by blowing the whistle externally. More
important factors leading to acts of whistleblowing
were found to be the perceived organisational dis-
position towards people raising concerns internally,
and the perceived seriousness of the malpractice
(Callahan and Dworkin, 1994; Miceli and Near,
1985; Near and Micelli, 1987).
Miceli and Near (1992) argue that organisational
retaliation against (internal) whistleblowers encour-
ages further (external) whistleblowing, while Math-
ews (1987) and Keenan (1990) claim that having
internal whistleblowing procedures encourages
internal disclosures but not external whistleblowing.
Further, Sims and Keenan (1998) show that formal

organisational policies that support external whis-
tleblowing are not a significant predictor of its
occurrence. Informal elements, however, such as
supervisory support to do so, are more likely to lead
to external whistleblowing. Vandekerckhove (2006)
suggests that the research undertaken on whistle-
blowing has had an impact on policy making, and a
salient trend, since the mid 1990s, is that whistle-
blowing legislation makes protection of individuals
conditional on raising the concern inside the orga-
nisation prior to external whistleblowing. Hence,
the current usage of the term whistleblowing also
covers internal disclosures.
In addition to this disagreement, there is also the
unresolved issue of whether blowing the whistle is
an obligation or not. Jubb (1999), in order to dis-
tinguish between whistleblowing and informing,
asserts that a disclosure has to be non-obligatory for

it to qualify as an act of whistleblowing. Current
usage of the term whistleblowing, however, refers to
both obligatory and non-obligatory disclosure. This
apparent confusion stems from the assumptions
regarding the level of individual autonomy and
individuation, and the shifts that occur with regard
to these assumptions while implementing an or-
ganisational whistleblowing policy, which will be
developed in this article.
In the past 30 years, numerous pieces of legislation
have been passed in many countries, offering whis-
tleblowers protection from retaliation for disclosing
organisational wrongdoing. In 1978, the US Civil
Service Reform Act (amended in 1989 to the
Whistleblower Protection Act) was the first statutory
legislation explicitly offering protection for whistle-
blowers. Michigan, in 1981, was the first state to offer
protection to whistleblowers in the U.S. Today, in

addition to the statutory laws at federal level, every
state in the U.S. has legislation protecting whistle-
blowers, and many federal laws have parts that address
whistleblowing. In the early 1990s, some Australian
states passed whistleblowing legislation. These were
South Australia in 1993, and the Australian Capital
Organisational Whistleblowing Policies 109
Territory, Queensland and New South Wales in
1994. Around the turn of the century, similar legis-
lation was enacted in the U.K. in 1998, in New
Zealand and South Africa in 2000, and in the
remaining Australian States of Victoria in 2001,
Tasmania in 2002 and Western Australia in 2003.
The Sarbanes–Oxley Act passed by US Congress in
2002 is primarily concerned with restoring investor
confidence, and also contains some whistleblower
provisions. Similarly, the Corporate Law Economic

Reform Program (Audit Reform and Corporate
Disclosure) Act (CLERP9 Act), passed in 2004 in
Australia, includes provisions protecting whistle-
blowers in the Australian private sector. In Japan, a
law was passed at the end of 2004, offering whistle-
blower protection that covers the private and public
sectors. Finally, in 2005, the Flemish Parliament in
Belgium enacted whistleblower protection. Mean-
while, proposals for legislation to protect whistle-
blowers, have been tabled in Ireland, Canada, India
and Netherlands, while in many other countries,
discussion and lobbying are ongoing in order to
protect whistleblowers in organisations.
Moral agency: autonomy or determinism
In order to examine the responsibilities of people at
work, and the moral status of whistleblowing poli-
cies, it is important to look at moral agency. Moral
agency is important for the determination of moral

behaviour and attribution of blame and praise. The
central concept of moral agency is responsibility,
which is closely related to moral cognition, moti-
vation, and autonomy, and virtue, moral weakness,
self-esteem, shame and guilt (Wren, 1997). Moral
agency enables the moral evaluation of the agent’s
behaviour. An agent in ethics is any entity that acts
and is subject to ethical rules, is a rational being, and
is not an agent for anyone or anything else (De
George, 1992). The point that moral agents are not
acting for anyone else makes them an end in
themselves, worthy of respect and never to be used
as a means by others, De George comments. This
point is also important because it allows moral
responsibility and accountability to be attributed to
individuals. Moral agency is accepted as a charac-
teristic of human beings, which enables persons to
live their own life and be responsible for their

actions. The same agreement does not exist, how-
ever, in accepting the possibility of moral autonomy
of people, especially at work, despite the fact that
moral autonomy leads to moral agency. People at
work are held responsible for their moral behaviour,
even if they are not or considered not to be morally
autonomous, since organisations usually prescribe
the means (systems/processes) and ends (goals/
objectives) of behaviour.
Moral philosophy has a long tradition from Plato
to Kant recognising that to be a moral agent is to be
autonomous or self-directed (Rachels, 1997). Dod-
son (1997) assigns the fundamental attribute of moral
agency on autonomy, the self-legislation or the
capacity of a will to give laws to itself. The moral
agent must then be bound by the self-legislated laws.
Autonomy appears more problematic, however,
when the moral agent is examined not in isolation

but in society, since society provides the moral code
instead of the individual. Dodson (1997), however,
explains that the social contract allows people to live
in societies, and yet remain autonomous. The idea of
the social contract is contingent on the fact that
persons come in contact with each other, and the
social contract determines the laws and conditions
that ought to govern this interaction. Persons are
moral agents, and they legislate the laws that govern
social life, so each one is obeying the laws one has
legislated for oneself. These laws are thus universal
because they command universal agreement and
apply universally. The Kantian reconciliation of
authority with autonomy, is through the social
contract. Each person is an autonomous agent, and
his autonomy, provided it is consistent with that of
all other agents, must be respected. This argument
can be applied to organisations as social systems or

communities. People in organisations can be morally
autonomous if they are able to legislate the rules that
govern organisational life, the life at work. This can
be accomplished by allowing people to participate in
the legislation of the rules and policies they are called
to obey. Interestingly, in 2005, the German
Employment Court in Wuppertal ruled that some
internal whistleblowing procedures were illegiti-
mate, precisely because the employee representatives
have had no input in designing and implementing
the procedures (Hewson, 2005).
The opposing position is that persons are not
autonomous in the Kantian sense, that is, they do
not develop their own morality, rather they are
determined or formed by society. This view per-
ceives ethical choices in human behaviour as a

consequence of value judgements. Due to the per-
vasive causation there is no free will or voluntarism,
rather determinism (Gordon, 1988). Determinism,
rather than agency, is the assumption of social
learning theory (Waterman, 1992), which holds that
a person’s moral formation and involves the acqui-
sition of rules or norms of behaviour from the per-
son’s external environment (Crittenden, 1990).
Accepting determinism, however, does not free
people from responsibility. Shriver (cited in Walton,
1997) views humans as largely responsible for their
acts, even if they are not fully responsible for their
character, because training, parental care, economic
circumstances etc. affect character. The adherents of
this view hold individuals responsible for their ac-
tions (Gordon, 1988) because the survival of any
human collective depends on holding its members
responsible for their individual actions. Responsi-

bility, for Gordon (1988, p. 37), is ethically judging
actions and providing penalties if necessary, and it is
important because the understanding of responsi-
bility provides a psychological feeling that becomes a
causal factor of future behaviour. ‘‘The individual’s
feeling of responsibility or accountability is an
indispensable link in the causal chain. It is due to the
fact that an individual cannot be aware of the causes
and connections of his or her decisions and behav-
iours, he or she acts ‘as if he or she had free will’’’.
People in organisations that blow the whistle are
moral agents, and are responsible for their behaviour.
Miceli and Near’s (1984) research has shown that
what whistleblowers hope and believe their speaking
out will achieve, is the correction of what they
perceive as an organisational wrongdoing. This re-
search also found that not everyone who perceives a
wrongdoing, acts upon that perception. In fact, only

42% stated in the research that they were ready to
blow the whistle. In a more recent poll by Time/
CNN (Time, 2002), taken at the end of 2002, when
Cooper, Rowley and Watkins became the new
whistleblower heroes for raising their concerns about
WorldCom, FBI and Enron respectively, 73% of the
participants reported that they were prepared to
blow the whistle. It must be noted that this high
percentage indicates intention and not readiness to
blow the whistle. Nevertheless, it represents a large
majority of the population that has such intentions.
More importantly, as an illustration of Shriver’s
feeling of responsibility as a causal factor of future
behaviour, is that Miceli and Near (1984, pp. 698–
699) have shown that those who observe wrong-
doing, yet would not speak up about it, say that they
would not do so because of the ‘retaliatory climate’
in their organisation. In contrast, those who say they

would speak up, were confident that they ‘‘would
not experience managerial retaliation if they blew
the whistle’’.
Whether it be free will/voluntarism or deter-
minism, whistleblowing requires an individual to be
a moral agent who is responsible, able and willing
not to be fully determined by the organisational
means and ends, and having a belief that speaking up
will cause the correction of an organisational
wrongdoing. Moreover, whistleblowing regulations
attempt to protect individuals, when they behave
responsibly towards society. They endeavour to
protect people from the organisations which they are
members of, when these organisations behave
against the good of society. The acknowledgement
of the need for such protection, however, implies
that moral agency, autonomy and responsibility are
problematic in organisations, or at the very least, that

they do not come naturally and are not welcomed
when they arrive.
Responsibility in organisations
Moving to the organisation and the organisational
context, Elliston (1982) notes that responsibility has
two dimensions. The descriptive dimension refers to
a causal relationship between one’s actions and an
outcome, whereas the normative dimension identi-
fies who should do what about it. Kaler (2002)
distinguishes similar dimensions of responsibility.
The causal dimension – Elliston’s descriptive
dimension – exists when people can be said to have
brought something about. The second dimension –
Elliston’s normative dimension – Kaler calls
responsibility in a sense of ‘duties owed’. In this
sense, people ‘have responsibilities’, they have cer-
tain duties or obligations.
In the organisational setting, the responsibilisation

of employees encompasses both the descriptive and
normative dimensions. Duties are ascribed to people,
and people are held accountable. People are ‘given’
responsibilities that create duties, and for those duties
they are both rewarded and ‘held’ responsible. It is
‘holding’ someone responsible that leads to
accountability. Employees are asked to ‘give ac-
count’ for what they have done to fulfil the
responsibilities given to them, and the duties laid
upon them. It needs to be noted, however, that
generally the process of accountability in organisa-
tions refers to the responsibilities attributed to
members by the organisation. To the extent that
these responsibilities are imposed in the absence of
or with limited consultation with the employees,
these responsibilities will lead to employees who are

heteronomous, that is, they follow externally im-
posed laws, and not autonomous moral agents. It is
this conflict between the organisationally imposed
duties and the self-authored obligations, that leads to
whistleblowing at work, where people believe that
their duties extend beyond the organisation to
society or that the organisationally imposed duties,
whether implicit or explicit, are not acceptable to
people. The increase in whistleblowing may, in fact,
be a consequence of the increased realisation of what
an organisation is for and for whom. An apparent
shift is evident where organisations are less accepted
as ends in themselves, and are increasingly perceived
as entities that exist to serve society. This realisation
is fuelled by the demise of the organisation man, and
the increased moralisation of business, which aims to
overcome the separation of the economic from the
rest of social activity (McKenna and Tsahuridu,

2001).
Understanding personal and organisational
responsibility and behaviour at work is more con-
voluted than personal responsibility and behaviour.
The organisational context may influence employ-
ees, because it can shape what is perceived as rational
by them (Vaughan, 1998). This phenomenon is
attributed by Vaughan to the specialisation and
division of labour, which may render the sum of
legitimate acts illegitimate, and also promote the
ignorance of the individual decision maker of the
total act, performed by the indistinguishable con-
tributions of numerous other people. Secrecy is also
built into the structure of organisations, continues
Vaughan, because, as organisations grow, actions in
one part of the organisation are not visible in others,
which lead to the segregation of knowledge, tasks
and goals. Knowledge becomes specialised, which

further inhibits knowing and promotes secrecy, and
the development of language associated with dif-
ferent tasks can conceal rather than reveal knowl-
edge, even between sections of the same
organisation. Vaughan, in her analysis of the Chal-
lenger accident, concludes that it was a mistake and
not the result of misconduct. The reasons for this
conclusion are that employees did not violate any
laws or rules in their pursuit of organisational goals,
and there was no intentional wrongdoing. Mellema
(2003), more recently, explains that the investiga-
tions into recent scandals involving firms such as
Enron, Arthur Andersen, and WorldCom have
shown the difficulties of identifying particular indi-
viduals to blame – responsibility in the causal sense
for particular events. Mellema argues that within the
context of highly complex situations – situations
brought about by organisational practices tend to be

highly complex – the notion of ‘ethical distance’
might shed some light on how collective the ‘col-
lective responsibility’ for organisational outcomes is.
Mellema’s characterisation of ethical distance in
terms of moral responsibility is important because it
steers away from two extremes on the question of
who bears responsibility for organisational outcomes.
One extreme is ‘organisational scapegoating’, refer-
ring to groups or corporations ‘‘pointing the finger
of blame at individuals as a means of focusing the
responsibility with an individual (scapegoat), even
though some responsibility accurately resides with
the group’’ (Wilson, 1993, cited in Bailey, 1997).
The opposite extreme is ‘individual scapetribing’,
referring to individuals ‘‘pointing the finger of blame
at organisations (or groups, institutions and systems)
as means of excusing, or ascribing responsibility for
their personally enacted behaviours’’ (Bailey, 1997,

p. 47).
‘Ethical distance’ refers to the distance between a
moral agent and a state of affairs which has occurred.
It is created by bureaucracy and rule following
(Bauman, 1989) and limits the responsibility that
creates the ethical proximity of another person. In
the case of organisational crime or scandal, people
belonging to the organisation might try to distance
themselves from that crime or scandalous outcome
by arguing that their involvement in the events
leading up to the crime or outcome was significantly
less extensive than the that of others. Equally, others
may endeavour to reduce ethical distance by attrib-
uting blame.
Mellema (2003) argues that there is an inverse
correlation between ethical distance and degrees of

responsibility – in Elliston’s (1982) descriptive sense.
In general, the more involvement someone has in
bringing about an outcome, the less the distance
between that someone and the outcome, and hence
the more responsible that person has. One of Mell-
ema’s criteria is whether there are defined institu-
tional roles to play that require specific types of
behaviour. If there are such roles, and if behaviour
according to those roles (heteronomous behaviour)
leads to a scandalous outcome, then the ethical dis-
tance is to be considered greater than when such
behaviour is pursued free of such institutional con-
straints (autonomous behaviour).
Hence, causal responsibility is to be considered
greater when behaviour is autonomous rather then
when it is heteronomous. Organisations, however,
in order to retain their freedom to pursue their
interests, attempt to limit individual autonomy.

They attempt to protect themselves from internal
‘‘conscience heroes’’ (Smith and Carroll 1984, p.
98), and limit individual variability. Individuality is
not coercively removed from people, rather, is so-
cialised out of them. It is converted to commitment
to the organisation, and makes people freely adopt
the organisational imperative and substitute personal
values with organisational values (Scott and Hart,
1980). This occurs whether they are compatible
with societal values or not. Such commitment also
provides security to the members of the organisa-
tion, because it enables them to surrender the or-
ganisations’ determination of values to top
management (Smith and Carroll, 1984). A certain
degree of compliance is something that organisations
require, and people in organisations readily and
willing provide.
The causes for the abdication of individual moral

autonomy at work have been recognized as both a
result of the characteristics of people and work or-
ganisations. Barnard (1938) identified the zone of
indifference, the range within which people at work
are willing to incontestably accept authority. He,
however, characterises this phenomenon irrespon-
sible, because people in organisations do not effect
their morality in their conduct. They are thus, not
morally autonomous persons and do not behave as
moral agents. The nature of the employment rela-
tionship is such that it grants a certain degree of
control to employers over the behaviour of their
employees, resulting in the relinquishment of some
of the employees’ autonomy (Radin and Werhane,
1996). Jackall (1988) attributes the abdication of
personal responsibility and autonomy to the imper-
atives of the work place. The paradox in organisa-
tions is that individuals relinquish varying degrees of

autonomy in them, but remain responsible for their
morality, despite the absence of autonomy to effect
their morality. Responsibility remains with the
individual because, even under determinism, moral
agency cannot be relinquished nor reassigned, but
rationality, cognition, judgement and behaviour can
be affected.
Whistleblowing policies
Organisational whistleblowing policies aim to
identify channels and procedures so as to raise con-
cern about organisational practices. They also aim to
identify how these practices are brought about by
the discretionary powers of the organisation’s
members. Whistleblowing policies and their aims
reiterate the notion of ethical distance between
people in organisations and organisational outcomes,
in two contradictory ways. They increase ethical
distance from an outcome, since people who know

about unethical and/or illegal organisational prac-
tices distance themselves by raising concern. They
also decrease ethical distance by increasing collective
responsibility, and making knowing equivalent to
doing. The second possibility makes it necessary to
look at whistleblowing policies in terms of the
likelihood of a moral slippery slope.
First, a whistleblowing policy allows individuals
to increase their ethical distance from an outcome.
Individuals having knowledge of practices leading to
a criminal or scandalous organisational outcome, and
not having the power to alter or prevent those
practices, can distance themselves from the practices
and the outcome by raising concern. In this sense,
whistleblowing policies can allow individuals to shed
off causal responsibility by taking up normative
responsibility and act out a ‘duty owed’. To the
extent that the responsibilisation of employees is a

call upon the moral agency of individuals, the
assumption of autonomy of the individual exists, in
Kantian terms. However, as Lovell (2002) has
shown, the autonomy of an individual is highly
vulnerable to contextual factors. These factors are
consequences of exercising autonomy; consequences
in terms of employment, remuneration, colleague
support, and personal reputation. Lovell shows that
the experienced dissonance between what respon-
sibilisation suggests and allows, results in a diminu-
tion of autonomy, and hence ‘‘moral agency
becomes the victim of autonomy’s frailty’’ (Lovell,
2002, p. 63). Increased decision-making powers
suggest heightened levels of autonomy, but both the
gained power and the suggested autonomy will be
constrained if they are not supported by an institu-

tional medium such as a whistleblowing policy.
These constrains are at least partly self-imposed by
the individual, but Lovell sees this as a reason to
regard the suppression of moral agency more wor-
rying than overt repression, because the suppression
is invisible – ‘‘it is not really happening, but it is’’
(Lovell, 2002, p. 65). Thus, though the assumption
is that moral autonomy of individuals in organisa-
tions is weak, whistleblowing policies can structur-
ally strengthen the exercise of that autonomy and
lead to more responsible employees. Such was the
argument of the Nolan Committee in the U.K.
(Nolan 1996), which had to make recommendations
to improve ‘Standards in Public Life’. In its second
report, the Nolan Committee expressed itself in fa-
vour of whistleblower policies that ‘‘enable concerns
to be raised confidentially inside and, if necessary,
outside the organisation’’ (Nolan, 1996, p. 22) based

on the argument that ‘‘placing staff in a position
where they feel driven to approach the media to
ventilate concerns, is unsatisfactory for both the staff
member and the organisation’’ (Nolan, 1996, p. 22).
Second, it is in offering the possibility to raise
concern about certain practices that one is given the
power, albeit indirectly, to alter or stop these prac-
tices, and in this sense whistleblowing policies de-
crease the possible ethical distance in organisations.
The existence of known and accessible whistle-
blowing procedures makes everyone, who has
knowledge of practices leading to a certain outcome
part of the collective, responsible for bringing about
the outcome. It thereby expands ‘collective
responsibility’ to include witnesses and bystanders.
Knowing leads to responsibility just as doing does.
Hence, being able to blow the whistle under a
whistleblowing policy makes it impossible to dis-

tance oneself from an outcome based on the claim
that one knew what was happening, but did not
have the power to alter or prevent it. It also makes it
impossible to distance oneself by claiming that rais-
ing concern was not part of the defined institutional
role. Those who knew but did not raise concern are
at least, to some degree, responsible for the outcome.
In this sense, whistleblowing policies can be an
expansion of normative responsibilities – duties
owed – on which causal responsibility can be
attributed. Thus, where the assumption is that moral
autonomy of individuals in organisations is strong,
whistleblowing policies can structurally turn auton-
omy into an imposed obligation, which may in fact
disable autonomy. Such was the effect of a change in
the UK Health and Safety at Work Regulations in
2003, as the implementation of a European Direc-
tive. In October 2003, the Health and Safety at

Work Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/3242) were
amended by the Management and Safety at Work
and Fire Precautions (Workplace) (Amendment)
Regulations 2003 (SI 2003/2457), which were in-
tended as an implementation of the EC Framework
Directive on Health and Safety (89/391/EEC). The
Directive made it necessary to adopt legislation, so
that employers would have civil liability for failing to
comply with health and safety regulations. The
legislation did that but imposed a limited liability on
employers, whereas employees held an unlimited
liability. The only way to avoid this liability was to
signal compliance failures. Not knowing is not a
defence. The regulation implied that in cases, where
it could be argued that it is reasonable that an em-
ployee would have known, then that employee has
civil liability. Public Concern at Work, a London
based charity, termed this flaw the ‘Speak Up or Pay

Up Regulation’ and issued a report outlining the
consequences in terms of extra administration and
insurance costs such liability would bring about
(PCAW, 2004). Meanwhile, the regulation got
amended, and the civil liability of employees has
been seriously restricted.
The two positions are summarised in Table I.
However, the distinction between whistleblowing as
a right or a way to increase ethical distance, and
whistleblowing as a duty – decreasing the ethical
distance, is gradual. What if there is a whistleblowing
policy in force, but an employee who knows about a
malpractice does not disclose it? This implies that the
employee had the opportunity to increase the ethical
distance, but chose not to do so. Isn’t the next step
to hold that employee accountable for not disclosing?

In other words, is not taking an ethical distance to a
particular practice any different from approving the
practice, hence complicity? Is there, then, still a
difference with not fulfilling the duty of blowing the
whistle?
Whistleblowing as a means to create ethical dis-
tance is not at the same time whistleblowing as a
duty, but the latter seems possible to evolve from the
former. This possibility raises the moral slippery
slope concern. Whistleblowing policies are morally
acceptable, as they enable employees to voice con-
cern about organisational wrongdoing and offer
protection to employees. If however, they are
introduced through the process described above they
are likely to lead to a responsibility to disclose or-
ganisational wrongdoing. Is the responsibilisation of
employees for organisational wrongdoing moral? Is
it acceptable to hold employees responsible for or-

ganisational wrongdoings?
In terms of autonomy in organisations, assuming
that individual autonomy is weak, organisations
introduce a whistleblowing policy to strengthen
autonomy. Once the policy is implemented, we can
no longer assume that autonomy is weak, rather,
since a whistleblowing policy has been imple-
mented, it must now assume that autonomy is
strong. This assumption however, justifies holding
employees accountable for not blowing the whistle,
and hence turn autonomy into a liability, an
instrument that exists to increase employee respon-
sibility for what they have or have not done in
relation to what they know or ought to know. In
this sense a whistleblowing policy becomes another
tool in the hands of organisations to control em-
ployee roles and behaviour. The policies can also
offer protection to the organisation by shifting

responsibility of organisational behaviour to indi-
vidual members.
Institutionalising the individual
Whistleblowing legislation and organisational whis-
tleblowing policies are important tools to improve
responsible behaviour by organisations. They can
also lead to more responsible behaviour by people in
organisations. However, as we argued in the previ-
ous section, implementing organisational mecha-
nisms ensuring the right to blow the whistle
implicitly impose the duty to blow the whistle.
Hence, instead of enabling moral autonomy and
responsible behaviour, organisational whistleblowing
policies can be used for the institutionalisation of the
individual rather than his individualisation.
The institutionalisation of the individual repre-
sents the obliteration of the conflict between the
interests of the organisation and society, precisely in

his ability to blow the whistle. An employee who
fails to blow the whistle, is one who fails to safeguard
the integration of organisation and society, the
integration of the economic and social concerns.
They turn the employee into a centaur – part hu-
man, part organisational being (Ahrne, 1994;
McKenna, 2001), or a ‘character’ in MacIntyre’s
sense of the term. MacIntyre (1984) regards a char-
acter not as merely a role or function, but as the
moral representative of a culture, because of the way
moral ideas are embodied through the character in
the social world. There might still be a distance
between the role and the individual. Doubt, com-
promise or cynicism can mediate between the
individual and the role – giving individuality a
chance. This is different with regard to a ‘character’
because its requirements are imposed from outside,
from the way others regard it and use it to under-

TABLE I
Whistleblowing: right versus duty
Status of whistleblowing Ethical distance Autonomy assumption
Consequence
Right Increased Autonomy is weak Responsible employees
Duty Decreased Autonomy is strong Liable employees
stand and evaluate themselves. ‘‘The character morally
legitimates a mode of social existence’’ (MacIntyre,
1984, p. 29). When whistleblowing policies insti-
tutionalise the individual, rather than being merely
an institutional safeguard for the individuation of the
employee, they turn the employee into a ‘character’.
The character of the employee – an empowered
employee, for whom whistleblowing procedures and
protection are available – represents the obliteration
of the dissensus between organisation and society,
precisely in his/her ability to blow the whistle. The

individual is institutionalised into the character of
the employee, meaning that every employee must
understand and evaluate himself/herself in terms of
that character. Hence, one who fails to blow the
whistle, is an employee who fails to safeguard the
integration of organisation and society.
Some professions consist of people with occupa-
tions that are considered as central institutions of our
society, such as doctors (crucial when it comes to our
health), lawyers (crucial when it comes to our rights
and the rule of law) or auditors (crucial when it
comes to our investments and pensions). These
professions can be seen as ‘characters’ in MacIntyre’s
sense. Doctors, lawyers and auditors indeed safeguard
the integration of their occupation with the interests
of society. But this is different from an employer
imposing a duty to blow the whistle on its employees.
Organisational policies that present whistleblowing as

a duty – cf. the majority of European company
policies in the research of Hassink et al. (2007) –
thereby shift the organisation’s duty to abide by the
law, the organisation’s requirement to be legitimate,
and other corporate social responsibilities, to its
employees. In this sense, organisational whistle-
blowing policies and whistleblowing legislation bear
the threat of becoming a management tool for em-
ployee control, and thus limiting the possibility of
people bringing their whole-selves to work, by
increasing other-imposed responsibility and further
limiting autonomy.
Conclusion
Whistleblowing policies are increasingly imple-
mented in organisations, and whistleblowing legis-
lation is introduced in more legal constituencies.
These policies aim to enable people in organisations,
to raise concern about organisational wrongdoing so

that such wrongdoing is rectified and protect whis-
tleblowers when they raise such concerns. Generally,
whistleblowing policies and legislation are recent
phenomena, and their implications for people at
work and organisation are under review without
agreement and certainty.
In this article we developed the likely conse-
quences of whistleblowing policies. It seems pos-
sible that organisational whistleblowing policies can
be justified as an organisational mechanism
enhancing the moral autonomy of persons in the
organisational context. They are thus presented as
institutional safeguards for the individuation of the
employee. In this sense, they provide another tool
for the destruction of the organisation man or
woman, and for the introduction of the whole
person at work. They enable people at work to be
moral agents, who are responsible for their

behaviour, and have the autonomy to behave as
their conscience dictates them. However, imple-
menting these policies may also turn responsibility
into liability and increase the control of people by
organisations, holding them responsible for what
they do or fail to do, thus further institutionalising
the organisation man or woman. This possibility
makes whistleblowing policies a management tool
to make people at work liable for what they do or
fail to do. This second possibility also shifts
responsibility of organisational behaviour to
employees, making them responsible not only for
reporting organisational wrongdoing but for or-
ganisational wrongdoing.
Whistleblowing policies, if they are to enable
moral autonomy at work, that is, if they are going
to enable people to live in accordance with their
values, to author their lives, need to be developed

by the people who are called to abide by them.
They also need to be examined in terms of likely
consequences, and effect on people’s and organi-
sations’ moral behaviour and responsibility.
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Eva E. Tsahuridu
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University of Greenwich,
Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, UK
E-mail: [email protected]

Wim Vandekerckhove
Center for Ethics & Value Inquiry,
Ghent University,
Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium
E-mail: [email protected]
Whistleblowing & Professional Responsibility
Sissela Bok
From Sissela Bok, "Whistleblowing and Professional
Responsibility," New York University Education Quarterly, II
(Summer 1980): 2-7.
"Whistleblowing" is a new label generated by our increased
awareness of the ethical conflicts encountered at work.
Whistleblowers sound an alarm from within the very
organization in which they work, aiming to spotlight neglect or
abuses that threaten the public interest. The stakes in
whistleblowing are high. Take the nurse who alleges that
physicians enrich themselves in her hospital through
unnecessary surgery; the engineer who discloses safety defects
in the braking systems of a fleet of new rapid-transit vehicles;
the Defense Department official who alerts Congress to military
graft and overspending: all know that they pose a threat to those
whom they denounce and that their own careers may be at risk.

MORAL CONFLICTS
Moral conflicts on several levels confront anyone who is
wondering whether to speak out about abuses or risks or serious
neglect. In the first place, he must try to decide whether, other
things being equal, speaking out is in fact in the public interest.
This choice is often made more complicated by factual
uncertainties: Who is responsible for the abuse or neglect? How
great -IS the threat? And how likely is it that speaking out will
precipitate changes for the better?
In the second place, a would-be whistleblower must weigh his
responsibility to serve the public interest against the
responsibility he owes to his colleagues and the institution in
which he works. While the professional ethic requires collegial
loyalty, the codes of ethics often stress responsibility to the
public over and above duties to colleagues and clients. Thus the
United States Code of Ethics for Government Servants asks
them to "ex- pose corruption wherever uncovered" and to "put
loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above
loyalty to persons, party, or government."' Similarly, the largest
professional engineering association requires members to speak
out against abuses threatening the safety, health, and welfare of
the public. 2
A third conflict for would-be whistleblowers is personal in
nature and cuts across the first two: even in cases where they
have concluded that the facts warrant speaking out, and that
their duty to do so overrides loyalties to colleagues and
institutions, they often have reason to fear the results of
carrying out such a duty. However strong this duty may seem in
theory, they know that, in practice, retaliation is likely. As a
result, their careers and their ability to support themselves and
their families may be unjustly impaired.' A government
handbook issued during the Nixon era recomends reassigning

"undesirables" to places so remote that they would prefer to
resign. Whistleblowers may also be downgraded or given work
without responsibility or work for which they are not qualified;
or else they may be given many more tasks than they can
possibly perform. Another risk is that an outspoken civil servant
may be ordered to undergo a psychiatric fitness-for-duty
examination,' declared unfit for service, and "separated" as well
as discredited from the point of view of any allegations he may
be making. Outright firing, finally, is the most direct
institutional response to whistleblowers.
Add to the conflicts confronting individual whistleblowers the
claim to self-policing that many professions make, and
professional responsibility is at issue in still another way. For
an appeal to the public goes against everything that "self-
policing" stands for. The question for the different professions,
then, is how to resolve, insofar as it is possible, the conflict
between professional loyalty and professional responsibility
toward the outside world. The same conflicts arise to some
extent in all groups, but professional groups often have special
cohesion and claim special dignity and privileges.
The plight of whistleblowers has come to be documented by the
press and described in a number of books. Evidence of the
hardships imposed on those who chose to act in the public
interest has combined with a heightened awareness of
professional malfeasance and corruption to produce a shift
toward greater public support of whistleblowers. Public service
law firms and consumer groups have taken up their cause;
institutional reforms and legislation have been proposed to
combat illegitimate reprisals.5
Given the indispensable services performed by so many
whistleblowers, strong public support is often merited. But the
new climate of acceptance makes it easy to overlook the dangers
of whistleblowing: of uses in error or in malice; of work and

reputations unjustly lost for those falsely accused; of privacy
invaded and trust undermined. There comes a level of internal
prying and mutual suspicion at which no institution can
function. And it is a fact that the disappointed, the incompetent,
the malicious, and the paranoid all too often leap to accusations
in public. Worst of all, ideological persecution throughout the
world traditionally relies on insiders willing to inform on their
colleagues or even on their family members, often through
staged public denunciations or press campaigns.
No society can count itself immune from such dangers. But
neither can it risk silencing those with a legitimate reason to
blow the whistle. How then can we distinguish between
different instances of whistleblowing? A society that fails to
protect the right to speak out even on the part of those whose
warnings turn out to be spurious obviously opens the door to
political repression. But from the moral point of view there are
important differ- ences between the aims, messages, and
methods of dissenters from within.
NATURE OF WHISTLEBLOWING
Three elements, each jarring, and triply jarring when conjoined,
lend acts of whistleblowing special urgency and bitterness:
dissent, breach of loyalty, and accusation.
Like all dissent, whistleblowing makes public a disagreement
with an authority or majority view. But whereas dissent can
concern all forms of disagreement with, for instance, religious
dogma or government policy or court decisions, whistleblowing
has the narrower aim of shedding light on negligence or abuse,
or alerting to a risk, and of assigning responsibility for this risk.
Would-be whistleblowers confront the conflict inherent in all
dissent: between conforming and sticking their necks out. The
more repressive the authority they challenge, the greater the

personal risk they take in speaking out. At exceptional times, as
in times of war, even ordinarily tolerant authorities may come
to regard dissent as unacceptable and even disloyal.6
Furthermore, the whistleblower hopes to stop the game; but
since he is neither referee nor coach, and since he blows the
whistle on his own team, his act is seen as a violation of
loyalty. In holding his position, he has assumed certain
obligations to his colleagues and clients. He may even have
subscribed to a loyalty oath or a promise of confidentiality.
Loyalty to colleagues and to clients comes to be pitted against
loyalty to the public interest, to those who may be injured
unless the revelation is made.
Not only is loyalty violated in whistieblowing, hierarchy as well
is often opposed, since the whistleblower is not only a colleague
but a subordinate. Though aware of the risks inherent in such
disobedience, he often hopes to keep his job.7 At times,
however, he plans his alarm to coincide with leaving the
institution. If he is highly placed, or joined by others, resigning
in protest may effectively direct public attention to the
wrongdoing at issue.' Still another alternative, often chosen by
those who wish to be safe from retaliation, is to leave the
institution quietly, to secure another post, and then to blow the
whistle. In this way, it is possible to speak with the authority
and knowledge of an insider without having the vulnerability of
that position.
It is the element of accusation, of calling a "foul," that arouses
the strongest reactions on the part of the hierarchy. The
accusation may be of neglect, of willfully concealed dangers, or
of outright abuse on the part of colleagues or superiors. It
singles out specific persons or groups as responsible for threats
to the public interest. If no one could be held responsible- as in
the case of an impending avalanche-the warning would not
constitute whistleblowing.

The accusation of the whistleblower, moreover, concerns a
present or an imminent threat. Past errors or misdeeds occasion
such an alarm only if they still affect current practices. And
risks far in the future lack the immediacy needed to make the
alarm a compelling one, as well as the close connection to
particular individuals that would justify actual accusations.
Thus an alarm can be sounded about safety defects in a rapid-
transit system that threaten or will shortly threaten passengers,
but the revelation of safety defects in a system no longer in use,
while of historical interest, would not constitute
whistleblowing. Nor would the revelation of potential problems
in a system not yet fully designed and far from implemented. 9
Not only immediacy, but also specificity, is heeded for there to
be an alarm capable of pinpointing responsibility. A concrete
risk must be at issue rather than a vague foreboding or a somber
prediction. The act of whistleblowing differs in this respect
from the lamentation or the dire prophecy. An immediate and
specific threat would normally be acted upon by those at risk.
The whistleblower assumes that his message will alert listeners
to something they do not know, or whose significance they have
not grasped because it has been kept secret.
The desire for openness inheres in the temptation to reveal any
secret, sometimes joined to an urge for self-aggrandizement and
publicity and the hope for revenge for past slights or injustices.
There can be plea- sure, too-righteous or malicious-in laying
bare the secrets of co-workers and in setting the record straight
at last. Colleagues of the whistleblower often suspect his
motives: they may regard him as a crank, as publicity- hungry,
wrong about the facts, eager for scandal and discord, and driven
to indiscretion by his personal biases and shortcomings.
For whistleblowing to be effective, it must arouse its audience.
Inarticulate whistleblowers are likely to fail from the outset.

When they are greeted by apathy, their message dissipates.
When they are greeted by disbelief, they elicit no response at
all. And when the audience is not free to receive or to act on the
information-when censorship or fear of retribution stifles
response-then the message rebounds to injure the whistleblower.
Whistleblowing also requires the possibility of concerted public
response: the idea of whistleblowing in an anarchy is therefore
merely quixotic.
Such characteristics of whistleblowing and strategic
considerations for achieving an impact are common to the
noblest warnings, the most vicious personal attacks, and the
delusions of the paranoid. How can one distinguish the many
acts of sounding an alarm that are genuinely in the public
interest from all the petty, biased, or lurid revelations that
pervade our querulous and gossip-ridden society? Can we draw
distinctions between different whistleblowers, different
messages, different methods?
We clearly can, in a number of cases. Whistleblowing may be
starkly inappropriate when in malice or error, or when it lays
bare legitimately private matters having to do, for instance, with
political belief or sexual life. It can, just as clearly, be the only
way to shed light on an ongoing unjust practice such as
drugging political prisoners or subjecting them to electro- shock
treatment. It can be the last resort for alerting the public to an
impending disaster. Taking such clear-cut cases as benchmarks,
and reflecting on what it is about them that weighs so heavily
for or against speaking out, we can work our way toward the
admittedly more complex cases in which whistleblowing is not
so clearly the right or wrong choice, or where different points
of view exist regarding its legitimacy-cases where there are
moral reasons both for concealment and for disclosure and
where judgments conflict. Consider the following cases 10:
A. As a construction inspector for a federal agency, John

Samuels (not his real
name), had personal knowledge of shoddy and deficient
construction practices by private contractors. He knew his
superiors received free vacations and entertainment, had their
homes remodeled and found jobs for their relatives-all courtesy
of a private contractor. These superiors later approved a
multimillion nc)-bid contract with the same "generous" firm.
Samuels also had evidence that other firms were hiring
nonunion laborers at a low wage while receiving substantially
higher payments from the government for labor costs. A former
superior, unaware of an office dictaphone, had incautiously
instructed Samuels on how to accept bribes for overlooking sub-
par performance.
As he prepared to volunteer this information to various
members of Congress, he became tense and uneasy. His family
was seared and the fears were valid. It might cost Samuels
thousands of dollars to protect his job. Those who had freely
provided Samuels with information would probably recant or
withdraw their friendship. A number of people might object to
his using a dictaphone to gather information. His agency would
start covering up and vent its collective wrath upon him. As for
reporters and writers, they would gather for a few days, then
move on to the next story. He would be left without a job, with
fewer friends, with massive battles looming, and without the
financial means of fighting them. Samuels decided to remain
silent.
B. Engineers of Company "A" prepared plans and specifications
for machinery to be used in a manufacturing process and
Company "A" turned them over to Company "B" for production.
The engineers of Company "B," in reviewing the plans and
specifications, came to the conclusion that they included certain
miscalculations and technical deficiencies of a nature that the

final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the
ultimate users, and that the equipment, if built according to the
original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of
persons in proximity to it. The engineers of Company "B" called
the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their
employer who, in turn, advised Company "A." Company "A"
replied that its engineers felt that the design and specifications
for the equipment were adequate and safe and that Company "B"
should proceed to build the equipment as designed and
specified. The officials of Company "B" instructed its engineers
to proceed with the work.
C. A recently hired assistant director of admissions in a state
university begins to wonder whether transcripts of some
applicants accurately reflect their accomplishments. He knows
that it matters to many in the university community, including
alumni, that the football team continue its winning tradition. He
has heard rumors that surrogates may be available to take tests
for a fee, signing the names of designated applicants for
admissions and that some of the transcripts may have been
altered. But he has no hard facts. When he brings the question
up with the director of admissions, he is told that the rumors are
unfounded and asked not to inquire further into the matter.
INDIVIDUAL MORAL CHOICE
What questions might those who consider sounding an alarm in ,
public ask themselves? How might they articulate the problem
they see and weigh its injustice before deciding whether or not
to reveal it? How can they best try to make sure their choice is
the right one? In thinking about these questions it helps to keep
in mind the three elements mentioned earlier: dissent, breach of
loyalty, and accusation. They impose certain requirements-of
accuracy and judgment in dissent; of exploring alternative
ways to cope with improprieties that minimize the breach of
loyalty; and of fairness in accusation. For each, careful

articulation and testing of arguments are needed to limit error
and bias.
Dissent by whistleblowers, first of all, is expressly claimed to
be in- tended to benefit the public. It carries with it, as a result,
an obligation to consider the nature of this benefit and to
consider also the possible harm that may come from speaking'
out: harm to persons or institutions and, ultimately, to the
public interest itself. Whistleblowers must, therefore, -begin by
making every effort to consider the effects of speaking out
versus those of remaining silent. They must assure themselves
of the accuracy of their reports, checking and rechecking the
facts before speaking out; specify the degree to which there is
genuine impropriety; consider how imminent is the threat they
see, how serious, and how closely linked to those accused of
neglect and abuse.
If the facts warrant whistleblowing, how can the second
element- breach of loyalty-be minimized? The most important
question here is whether the existing avenues for change within
the organization have been explored. It is a waste of time for
the public as well as harmful to the institution to sound the
loudest alarm first. Whistleblowing has to remain a last
alternative because of its destructive side effects: it must be
chosen only when other alternatives have been considered and
rejected. They may be rejected if they simply do not apply to
the problem at hand, or when there is not time to go through
routine channels or when the institution is so corrupt or
coercive that steps will be taken to silence the whistleblower
should he try the regular channels first.
What weight should an oath or a promise of silence have in the
conflict of loyalties? One sworn to silence is doubtless under a
stronger obligation because of the oath he has taken. He has
bound himself, assumed specific obligations beyond those
assumed in merely taking a new position. But even such

promises can be overridden when the public interest at issue is
strong enough. They can be overridden if they were obtained
under duress or through deceit. They can be overridden, too, if
they promise something that is in itself wrong or unlawful. The
fact that one has promised silence is no excuse for complicity in
covering up a crime or a violation of the public's trust.
The third element in whistleblowing -accusation- raises equally
serious ethical concerns. They are concerns of fairness to the
persons accused of impropriety. Is the message one to which the
public is entitled in the first place? Or does it infringe on
personal and private matters that one has no right to invade?
Here, the very notion of what is in the public's best "interest" is
at issue: "accusations" regarding an official's unusual sexual or
religious experiences may well appeal to the public's interest
without being information relevant to "the public interest."
Great conflicts arise here. We have witnessed excessive claims
to executive privilege and to secrecy by government officials
during the Watergate scandal in order -to cover up for abuses
the public had every right to discover. Conversely, those hoping
to profit from prying into private matters have become adept at
invoking "the public's right to know." Some even regard such
private matters as threats to the public: they voice their own
religious and political prejudices in the language of accusation.
Such a danger is never stronger than when the accusation is
delivered surreptitiously. The anonymous accusations made
during the McCarthy period regarding political beliefs and
associations often injured persons who did not even know their
accusers or the exact nature of the accusations.
From the public's point of view, accusations that are openly
made by identifiable individuals are more likely to be taken
seriously. And in fairness to those criticized, openly accepted
responsibility for blowing the whistle should be preferred to the
denunciation or the leaked rumor. What is openly stated can

more easily be checked, its source's motives challenged, and the
underlying information examined. Those under attack may
other- wise be hard put to defend themselves against nameless
adversaries. Often they do not even know that they are
threatened until it is too late to respond. The anonymous
denunciation, moreover, common to so many regimes, places
the burden of investigation on government agencies that may
thereby gain the power of a secret police.
From the point of view of the whistleblower, on the other hand,
the anonymous message is safer in situations where retaliation
is likely. But it is also often less likely to be taken seriously.
Unless the message is accompanied by indications of how the
evidence can be checked, its anonymity, however safe for the
source, speaks against it.
During the process of weighing the legitimacy of speaking out,
the method used, and the degree of fairness needed,
whistleblowers must try to compensate for the strong possibility
of bias on their part. They should be scrupulously aware of any
motive that might skew their message: a desire for self-defense
in a difficult bureaucratic situation, perhaps, or the urge to seek
revenge, or inflated expectations regarding the effect their
message will have on the situation. (Needless to say, bias
affects the silent as well as the outspoken. The motive for
holding back important information about abuses and injustice
ought to give similar cause for soul-searching.)
Likewise, the possibility of personal gain from sounding the
alarm ought to give pause. Once again there is then greater risk
of a biased message. Even if the whistleblower regards himself
as incorruptible, his profiting from revelations of neglect or
abuse will lead others to question his motives and to put less
credence in' his charges. If, for example, a government
employee stands to make large profits from a book exposing the
iniquities in his agency, there is danger that he will, perhaps

even unconsciously, slant his report in order to cause more of a
sensation.
A special problem arises when there is a high risk that the civil
servant who speaks out will have to go through costly litigation.
Might he not justifiably try to make enough money on his public
revelations-say, through books or public speaking-to offset his
losses? In so doing he will not strictly speaking have profited
from his revelations: he merely avoids being financially crushed
by their sequels. He will nevertheless still be suspected at the
time of revelation, and his message will therefore seem more
questionable.
Reducing bias and error in moral choice often requires
consultation, even open debater: methods that force articulation
of the moral arguments at stake and challenge privately held
assumptions. But acts of whistleblowing present special
problems when it comes to open consultation. On the one hand,
once the whistleblower sounds. his alarm publicly, his
arguments will be subjected to open scrutiny; he will have to
articulate his reasons for speaking out and substantiate his
charges. On the other hand, it will then be too late to retract the
alarm or to combat its harmful effects, should his choice to
speak out have been ill-advised.
For this reason, the whistleblower owes it to all involved to
make sure of two things: that he has sought as much and as
objective advice regarding his choice as he can before going
public; and that he is aware of the arguments for and against the
practice of whistleblowing in general, so that he can see his
own choice against as richly detailed and coherently structured
a background as possible. Satisfying these two requirements
once again has special problems because of the very nature of
whistleblowing: the more corrupt the circumstances, the more
dangerous it may be to seek consultation before speaking out.
And yet, since the whistleblower himself may have a biased

view of the state of affairs, he may choose not to consult others
when in fact it would be not only safe but advantageous to do
so; he may see corruption and conspiracy where none exists.
NOTES 1. Code of Ethics for Government Service passed by
the U.S. House of Represen- tatives in the 85th Congress (1958)
and applying to all government employees and office holders.
2. Code of Ethics of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Article IV.
3. For case histories and descriptions of what befalls
whistleblowers, see Rosemary Chalk and Frank von Hippel,
"Due Process for Dissenting Whistle-Blowers," Technology
Review 81 (June-July 1979): 48-55; Alan S. Westin and Stephen
Salisbury, eds., Individual Rights in the Corporation (New
York: Pantheon, 1980); Helen Dudar, "The Price of Blowing the
Whistle," New York Times Magazine, 30 October 1979, pp. 41-
54; John Edsall, Scientific Freedom and Responsibility
(Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement
of Science, 1975), p. 5; David Ewing, Freedom Inside the
Organization (New York: Dutton, 1977);, Ralph Nader, Peter
Petkas, and Kate Blackwell, Whistle Blowing (New York-
Grossman, 1972); Charles Peter and Taylor Branch, Blowing the
Whistle (New York: Praeger, 1972).
4. Congressional, hearings uncovered a growing resort to
mandatory psychiatric examinations.
5. For an account of strategies and proposals to support
government whistleblowers, see Government Accountability
Project, A Whistleblowlees Guide to the Federal Bureaucracy
(Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1977).
6. See, e.g., Samuel Eliot Morison, Frederick Merk, and Frank
Friedel, Dissent in Throe American Wars (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1970).
7. In the scheme worked out by Albert Hirschman in Exit,
Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1970), whistleblowing represents "voice" accompanied by a
preference not to "exit," though forced "exit" is clearly a
possibility and "voice" after or during "exit" may be chosen for
strategic reasons.
8. Edward Weisband and Thomas N. Franck, Resignation in
Protest (New York: Grossman, 1975).
9. Future developments can, however, be the cause for
whistleblowing if they are seen as resulting from steps being
taken or about to be taken that render them inevitable.
10. Case A is adapted from Louis Clark, "The Sound of
Professional Suicide," Barrister, Summer 1978, p. 10; Case B is
Case 5 in Robert J. Baum and Albert Flores, eds., Ethical
Problems of Engineering (Troy, N.Y.: Rensselaer Poly- technic
Institute, 1978), p. 186.
11. I discuss these questions of consultation and publicity with
respect to moral choice in chapter 7 of Sissela Bok, Lying (New
York: Pantheon, 1978); and in Secrets (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1982), Ch. IX and XV.

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