Bouville Whistle Blowing

Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

Whistle-blowing and morality

Mathieu Bouville (

m-bouville@imre.a-star.edu.sg

)

Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore 117602 Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore 117528

Abstract.

Whistle-blowing is generally considered from the viewpoint of pro-fessional morality. Morality rejects the idea of choice and the interests of the pro-fessional as immoral. Yet the dreadful retaliations against the messengers of thetruth make it necessary for morality to leave a way out of whistle-blowing. Thisis why it forges rights (sometimes called duties) to trump the duty to the publicprescribed by professional codes. This serves to hide the obvious fact that whetherto blow the whistle is indeed a choice, not a matter of objective duty. One shouldalso notice that if it fails to achieve anything then blowing the whistle was the wrongdecision (or maybe the right decision that nobody would want to make). There isnevertheless a tendency to judge it based on the motivation of the whistle blower. Ina way, whistle blowers should strive to act like saints. Yet, it is logically impossibleto hold both whistleblowing as mandatory and whistleblowers as heroes or saints.Moreover, this tends to value the great deeds of a few over the lives of the many,which is incompatible with the basic assumptions of morality. But consistency is nota main feature of professional morality.

Keywords:

business ethics; code of ethics; duty; engineering ethics; moral luck;moral obligation

Article published by the

Journal of Business Ethics

doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9529-72

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w2t5252050044180/

1. Introduction

Whistle-blowing is the act, for an employee (or former employee), of disclosing what he believes to be unethical or illegal behavior to highermanagement (internal whistle-blowing) or to an external authority orthe public (external whistle-blowing). Its status is debated: as Roth-schild and Miethe (1999) note, “some see [whistle blowers] as traitorousviolators of organizational loyalty norms; others see them as heroic de-fenders of values considered to be more important than company loyalty(e.g., the public health, truth-in-advertising, environmental respect).”Since “those who raise ethical issues are treated as disturbed or morallysuspect” (Alford, 2007), Near and Miceli (1996) ask “are whistle blow-ers really crackpots?”. On the other hand, to Rothschild and Miethe(1999), whistle-blowing is a “new form of worker resistance” relevant

c



2007

Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

2

Mathieu Bouville

to the “unending battle between labor and management to controlthe workplace.” Grant (2002) calls whistle blowers “saints of secularculture.” Edward Morgan Forster famously said “If I had to choosebetween betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I shouldhave the guts to betray my country”; it seems that whistle-blowing isthe choice between betraying one’s company and one’s humanity.In order to study whistle-blowing from an ethics viewpoint, oneobviously needs to know what is meant by ‘ethics.’ Some treat ‘ethics’and ‘morality’ as synonymous. Others consider morality as a specialform of ethics:the word ‘morality’ has by now taken on a more distinctive content,and I am going to suggest that morality should be understood as aparticular development of the ethical, one that has a special signif-icance in modern Western culture. It peculiarly emphasizes certainethical notions rather than others, developing in particular a certainnotion of obligation, and it has some peculiar presuppositions. Inview of these features it is also, I believe, something we should treatwith a special skepticism. (Williams, 1985, p. 6)Whereas “ethical life itself is important, but it can see that things otherthan itself are important” (Williams, 1985, p. 184), morality tends toclaim control over everything. To Nietzsche (1888), “morality is the bestof all devices for leading mankind by the nose.” I shall follow Williamsin using ‘ethics’ broadly and ‘morality’ narrowly and I shall ask, takingwhistle-blowing as an example, to what extent professional ethics is infact professional morality.

2. Whistle-blowing and codes of morality

In the case of engineering, authors typically mention that the ﬁrst canonof the code of the National Society of Professional Engineering (dutyto the public) should trump the fourth canon (duty to the employer):“the health, safety, and welfare of the public are to be placed ﬁrst”(Harris et al., 2005, p. 183). (I shall take it for granted that humanlives are indeed more important than obedience — especially to peoplewho feel otherwise.) Consequently, whistle-blowing is mandatory: “itis permissible to whistleblow when the following conditions have beenmet. Under these conditions there is also an obligation to whistleblow”(Martin and Schinzinger, 2005, p. 174).

Whistle-blowing and morality

32.1.

A dreadful obligation

Alford (2007) notes that “theirs is an act of considerable consequence,especially when one considers that among fired whistle blowers, mostwill lose their homes and ultimately, their marriages”; Rothschild andMiethe (1999) indeed found that over half the whistle blowers they in-terviewed had family problems. That Gunsalus (1998) wrote an articleentitled “How to blow the whistle and still have a career afterwards”is significant. Rothschild and Miethe found that two thirds of whistleblowers “lost their job or were forced to retire” and “were blacklistedfrom getting another job in their field.” Consequently, two thirds of them also had severe financial problems. They also found that 84%suffered from “severe depression or anxiety” and over two thirds of themalso had “declining physical health.” A whistle blower mentioned byOliver (2003) “estimates that his legal costs have exceeded $130,000.”Alford (2007) sees suffering as an essential part of whistle-blowing:“the whistle blower is defined by the retaliation he or she receives.No retaliation, and the whistle blower is just a responsible employeedoing her job to protect the company’s interest.” If “often the protestis most effective if one has already resigned from the organization”(Harris et al., 2005, p. 206) then one can only choose between a totalself-sacrifice and a partial and pointless self-sacrifice.How can one make any of this mandatory?

1

2.2.

Duality of engineering ethics

Engineering ethics classes and textbooks are based on case studiesasking ‘what should an engineer do in this situation?’. Since “techno-logical, scientific, humanistic, and social issues are all mixed together”(Williams, 2003), the answer typically mixes the ethical and the non-ethical: engineering ethics is then the finding of a creative solutionincorporating concerns of many kinds.On the other hand, codes of conduct are morality — “many of the standard provisions of engineering codes are simply specific ap-plications of common morality to the engineering profession” (Harriset al., 2005, p. 52). Codes are obligations, duties. They require a verysharp distinction between the ethical and the non-ethical. There aretwo separate questions: ‘what should a professional do, from an ethicalpoint of view?’ (i.e. ‘what are his duties?’) and ‘what should a profes-sional do, from a non-ethical point of view?’ (e.g. technical concerns).The first question is supposed to trump the second. The whole issueof whistle-blowing is then framed in terms of obligations (or absencethereof).

of 00

Leave a Comment