When, If Ever, an Employee Is Morally Required To Blow the Whistle?
8th April, 2014
Introduction
Whistle blowing is usually perceived from the professional morality viewpoint. However,
the idea of interests and choice of the professionals are rejected by morality and considered
as immoral, yet it becomes necessary for morality to leave room for whistle blowing in
case of appalling retributions against truth messengers. This is why; whistle blowing
sometimes requires professionals to forge their rights and duties for trumping the public
duty as prescribed by the codes of conduct. It is an obvious fact that whether to blow a
whistle is not a matter of objective duty, but it is indeed a choice. There is a tendency to
judge the morality for whistle blowing based on the whistle blower’s motivation.
For a present as well as a former employee, whistle blowing is the act of disclosing illegal
or unethical behavior (based on his belief) to his higher management and supervisors
(internal whistle blowing) or to the public or an external authority (external whistle
blowing). According to Miethe & Rothschild (1999), whistle blowers are often seen by
some people as traitorous violators of loyalty norms of the organization, while some see
them as heroic defenders of values more important than organizational loyalty; for instance
values like truth in advertising, the public health, environmental respect etc. Alford (2007)
states that whistle blowers who raise ethical issues are often treated as morally suspect or
disturbed while on the contrary, Miethe & Rothschild (1999) describe whistle blowing as a
new form of labor resistance which results in an unending battle between the management
and the labor.
Whistle blowers are called as “saints of secular culture” by Grant (2002); however, whistle
blowing can be considered as the choice between revealing one’s humanity and one’s
organization. In order to study the ethical perspective of whistle blowing, one is obviously
required to know the meaning of ‘ethics’. ‘Morality’ and ‘ethics’ are often treated as
synonyms by some whilst for some; morality is a special form of ethics. Morality should
be taken as a development of ethics that emphasizes some ethical notions, develop notion
of obligations having certain peculiar presuppositions. This essay introduces the concept of
whistle blowing and whistle blowers and will focus on the cases and issues when whistle
blowing by an employee is morally required and justified.
Whistle Blowing and Morality
Generally, an act requires no justification unless there is a reason to think it wrong
