Whistleblowing


Book Description

Society needs whistleblowers, yet to speak up and expose wrongdoing often results in professional and personal ruin. Kate Kenny draws on the stories of whistleblowers to explain why this is, and what must be done to protect those who have the courage to expose the truth. Despite their substantial contribution to society, whistleblowers are considered martyrs more than heroes. When people expose serious wrongdoing in their organizations, they are often punished or ignored. Many end up isolated by colleagues, their professional careers destroyed. The financial industry, rife with scandals, is the focus of Kate Kenny’s penetrating global study. Introducing whistleblowers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Ireland working at companies like Wachovia, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Countrywide–Bank of America, Whistleblowing suggests practices that would make it less perilous to hold the powerful to account and would leave us all better off. Kenny interviewed the men and women who reported unethical and illegal conduct at major corporations in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. Many were compliance officers working in influential organizations that claimed to follow the rules. Using the concept of affective recognition to explain how the norms at work powerfully influence our understandings of right and wrong, she reframes whistleblowing as a collective phenomenon, not just a personal choice but a vital public service.




Whistle Blowing


Book Description




Whistleblowing Nation


Book Description

The twenty-first century witnessed a new age of whistleblowing in the United States. Disclosures by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and others have stoked heated public debates about the ethics of exposing institutional secrets, with roots in a longer history of state insiders revealing privileged information. Bringing together contributors from a range of disciplines to consider political, legal, and cultural dimensions, Whistleblowing Nation is a pathbreaking history of national security disclosures and state secrecy from World War I to the present. The contributors explore the complex politics, motives, and ideologies behind the revelation of state secrets that threaten the status quo, challenging reductive characterizations of whistleblowers as heroes or traitors. They examine the dynamics of state retaliation, political backlash, and civic contests over the legitimacy and significance of the exposure and the whistleblower. The volume considers the growing power of the executive branch and its consequences for First Amendment rights, the protection and prosecution of whistleblowers, and the rise of vast classification and censorship regimes within the national-security state. Featuring analyses from leading historians, literary scholars, legal experts, and political scientists, Whistleblowing Nation sheds new light on the tension of secrecy and transparency, security and civil liberties, and the politics of truth and falsehood.




Whistle-Blowing in Organizations


Book Description

This is a research-based book on whistle-blowing in organizations. The three noted authors describe studies on this important topic and the implications of the research and theory for organizational behavior, managerial practice, and public policy. In the past few years there have been critical developments, including corporate scandals, which




Crisis of Conscience


Book Description

We are living in a time of mind-boggling corruption, but we are also living in a golden age of whistleblowing. Over the past two decades, whistleblowers have emerged as both the government's best weapon against corporate misconduct and the citizenry's best defence against government. Drawing on relentless original research, including in-depth interviews with more than 200 whistleblowers, Crisis of Conscience is a modern-day David-and-Goliath saga, told through a series of riveting cases drawn from Big Pharma, the military, and beyond.




Whistleblower's Handbook


Book Description

UPDATED IN MARCH 2013 to include the historic $104-million Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblower case and more! From the nation’s leading whistleblower attorney, comes the third edition of the first-ever consumer guide to whistleblowing. In The Whistleblower’s Handbook, Stephen Martin Kohn explains nearly all federal and state laws regarding whistleblowing. In the step-by-step bulk of the book, he also presents twenty-one rules for whistleblowers.




Corporate Whistleblowing Regulation


Book Description

This book adopts a cross-jurisdictional perspective to consider contemporary corporate whistleblowing issues from an ethical theoretical perspective, regulatory perspective, and practical perspective. It includes in particular arguments in favour of and against the adoption of financial incentive schemes for whistleblowers, as well as the potential implications of adopting such schemes. This approach provides a valuable opportunity for comparison from a law reform perspective. The book brings together authors from various jurisdictions – Canada, Australia, and the USA – who, through their exposure to this area of law, be it as practitioners, regulators, or academics, offer valuable and interesting insights on the emerging and topical area of corporate whistleblowing generally, and whistleblowing rewards in particular. These three jurisdictions were selected on the basis of their reform-oriented stance on corporate whistleblowing and/or implementation of financial incentives for whistleblowing, creating an opportunity to assess contemporary regulatory structures and in particular how incentives measures could interact with corporate whistleblowing regulatory frameworks, and how they could contribute to improved governance. The reasons for the rejection of the notion of financial incentives in the United Kingdom are also reviewed, in order to provide a comparative overview. The book provides useful guidance for those who may be affected by the implementation of corporate whistleblowing schemes, including for reward, whether as regulators, practitioners, company directors, or whistle blowers.




Divided Loyalties


Book Description

This study provides a detailed, in-depth analysis of a single incident rooted in the effort of a group of professional employees to serve the public welfare. It reveals in microcosm the interplay of political forces, economic interests, personal ambition, organizational structure, and professional ethics that culminated in an act of whistle-blowing. The incident took place during the final construction phase of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), designed to be America's first attempt at space-age mass transportation. Three BART engineers, convinced of the lack of responsiveness of management to their concerns about the system's safety, were fired for insubordination and other organizational sins. Based upon repeated interviews with the engineers, with BART managers and directors, and with the professional societies involved, as well as upon an extensive body of documents and court depositions, legislative reports, media reports, and institutional memoranda. Divided Loyalties sets a theoretical context for the issues, traces the incident from its beginning, examines the aftermath of the engineers' dismissal, and concludes with a set of recommendations that should be considered by public and private organizations, professional associations, agencies of government, and individual professional employees.




The Ethics of Whistleblowing


Book Description

Following the enormous political, legal, and media interest that has surrounded high profile cases of whistleblowing, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the fundamental ethical questions surrounding whistleblowing have often been obscured. In this fascinating book Eric Boot examines the ethical issues at stake in whistleblowing. Can the disclosure of classified government documents ever be justified? If so, how? Why does it require justification in the first place? Can there ever be a duty to blow the whistle? When is breaking the law justified? On a more practical level, this book also considers the various whistleblower protection documents and finds them often lacking in consistency and clarity, before providing an argument for a plausible "public interest" defense for whistleblowers.




Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks


Book Description

The most controversial activist organization of the 21st century, WikiLeaks has attracted strong, divergent opinions from across the political spectrum. Lauded by its supporters for its indispensable role in holding governments, corporations, and human rights abusers to account, its advocates and journalists have been excoriated by opponents as traitors, threats to legitimate governments, and misogynists. Yet so much media attention is focused upon founder Julian Assange, and his ongoing confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, that the broader dimensions of WikiLeaks are rarely aired. Especially critical in these omissions is the role of women, both in the organization and the more general struggle for information freedom. Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks presents a conversation between three extraordinary advocates who have been at the forefront of such activity: acclaimed journalist and human rights advocate Sarah Harrison, Croatian-German theater director, activist and author Angela Richter, and Renata Avila, a celebrated Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert. Ranging widely, from the dishonesty of the mainstream media and its contrasting treatment of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning to the terrifying monopolization of personal data under tech behemoths such as Facebook and Google, this book is a crucial intervention in the ongoing debate around digital activism.