Ronald duska whistleblowing and employee loyalty summary

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(1990): 19-41; John M. Whelan, "Charity and the Duty to Rescue," Social Theory and Practice 17, no. 3 (1991): 441-56; and David Copp, "Re- sponsibility for Collective Inaction, "Journal of Social Philosophy 22, no. 2 (1991): 71-80. See, for example, David Theo Goldberg, "Tun- ing In to Whistle Blowing," Business and Pro- fessional Ethics Journal!, no. 2 (1988): 85-94. For an explanation of why whistle-blowing is inevitably a high risk undertaking, see my "Avoiding the Tragedy of Whistleblowing," Business and Professional Ethics fournal 8, no. 4 (1989): 3-19.

After I presented this paper in Klamath Falls, Boisjoly told me that though his motive for tes- tifying as he did was (as I surmised) to prevent falsification of the record, part of his reason for wanting to prevent that was that he wanted to do what he could to prevent the managers responsible for the disaster from having any part in redesigning the boosters. This secondary motive is, of course, consistent with the com- plicity theory.

De George, p. 210: "The notion of .smoMsharm might be expanded to include serious financial harm, and kinds of harm other than death and serious threats to health and body. But as we noted earlier, we shall restrict ourselves here to products and practices that produce or threaten serious harm or danger to life and health." See Myron Peretz Glazer and Penina Migdal Glazer, The Whistleblowers: Exposing Corruption in Government and Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1989) for a good list of whistle-blowers (with detailed description of each); for an older list (with descriptions), see Alan F Westin, Whistleblowing! Loyalty and Dissent in the Corpo- ration (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1981). Compare De George, p. 211: "By reporting one's concern to one's immediate superior or other appropriate person, one preserves and observes the regular practices of firms, which on the whole promote their order and efficiency; this fulfills one's obligation of min- imizing harm, and it precludes precipitous whistle blowing." (Italics mine.)

Whistle-Blowing and Employee Loyalty

T h e r e are p r o p o n e n t s on b o t h sides of the i ssue—those who praise whistle-blowers as civic he roes a n d those who c o n d e m n t h e m as "finks." Maxwell Glen and Cody Shearer, who wrote about the whistle-blowers at Three Mile I s land say, "Wi thou t t h e courageous b r e e d of assorted company insiders known as whistle-blowers—workers who often risk their livelihoods to disclose information about con- struction and design flaws—the Nuclear Reg- ulatory Commission itself would be nearly as idle as Three Mile Island. . . . Tha t whistle- blowers deserve both gratitude and protection is beyond disagreement."

Still, while Glen and Shearer praise whisde- blowers, others vociferously condemn them. For

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example, in a now infamous quote, James Roche, the former president of General Motors said:

Some critics are now busy eroding another sup- port of free enterprise—the loyalty of a man- agement team, with its unifying values and cooperative work. Some of the enemies of busi- ness now encourage an employee to be disloyal to the enterprise. They want to create suspicion and disharmony, and pry into the proprietary in- terests of the business. However this is labeled— industrial espionage, whistle-blowing, or professional responsibility—it is another tactic for spreading disunity and creating conflict.2

From Roche ' s p o i n t of view, n o t only is whist le-blowing n o t "courageous" a n d n o t deserving of "grat i tude a n d p ro tec t ion" as

Reprinted by permission of the author.

156 Ethical Treatment of Employees

Glen and Shearer would have it, it is corrosive and impermissible.

Discussions of whistle-blowing generally revolve around three topics: (1) attempts to de- fine whistle-blowing more precisely, (2) debates about whether and when whistle-blowing is per- missible, and (3) debates about whether and when one has an obligation to blow the whistle.

In this paper I want to focus on the second problem, because I find it somewhat discon- certing that there is a problem at all. When I first looked into the ethics of whistle-blowing it seemed to me that whistle-blowing was a good thing, and yet I found in the literature claim after claim that it was in need of defense, that there was something wrong with it, namely that it was an act of disloyalty.

If whistle-blowing is a disloyal act, it deserves disapproval, and ultimately any action of whistle- blowing needs justification. This disturbs me. It is as if the act of a good Samaritan is being condemned as an act of interference, as if the prevention of a suicide needs to be justified.

In his book Business Ethics, Norman Bowie claims that "whistle-blowing... violate (s) a. prima facie duty of loyalty to one's employer." Ac- cording to Bowie, there is a duty of loyalty that prohibits one from reporting his employer or company. Bowie, of course, recognizes that this is only a prima facie duty, that is, one that can be overridden by a higher duty to the public good. Nevertheless, the axiom that whistle-blow- ing is disloyal is Bowie's starting point.

Bowie is not alone. Sissela Bok sees "whistle- blowing" as an instance of disloyalty:

The whistle-blower 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 loy- alty oath or a promise of confidentiality. .. . Loy- alty 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.4

Bowie and Bok end up defending whistle- blowing in certain contexts, so I don't neces- sarily disagree with their conclusions. However, I fail to see how one has an obligation of loyalty to one's company, so I disagree with their per- ception of the problem and their starting point. I want to argue that one does not have an obligation of loyalty to a company, even a prima facie one, because companies are not the kind of things that are properly objects of loyalty. To make them objects of loyalty gives them a moral status they do not deserve and in raising their status, one lowers the status of the individuals who work for the companies. Thus, the difference in perception is impor- tant because those who think employees have an obligation of loyalty to a company fail to take into account a relevant moral difference between persons and corporations.