Speaking Truth to Power - A Theory of Whistleblowing PDF Download

Author: Daniele Santoro
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319907239
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Whistleblowing is the public disclosure of information with the purpose of revealing wrongdoings and abuses of power that harm the public interest. This book presents a comprehensive theory of whistleblowing: it defines the concept, reconstructs its origins, discusses it within the current ethical debate, and elaborates a justification of unauthorized disclosures. Its normative proposal is based on three criteria of permissibility: the communicative constraints, the intent, and the public interest conditions. The book distinguishes between two forms of whistleblowing, civic and political, showing how they apply in the contexts of corruption and government secrecy. The book articulates a conception of public interest as a claim concerning the presumptive interest of the public. It argues that public interest is defined in opposition to corporate powers and its core content identified by the rights that are all-purposive for the distribution of social benefits. A crucial part of the proposal is dedicated to the impact of security policies and government secrecy on civil liberties. It argues that unrestrained secrecy limits the epistemic entitlement of citizens to know under which conditions their rights are limited by security policies and corporate interests. When citizens are denied the right to assess when these policies are prejudicial to their freedoms, whistleblowing represents a legitimate form of political agency that safeguards the fundamental rights of citizens against the threat of unrestrained secrecy by government power. Finally, the book contributes to shifting the attention of democratic theory from the procedures of consent formation to the mechanisms that guarantee the expression of dissent. It argues that whistleblowing is a distinctive form of civil dissent that contributes to the demands of institutional transparency in constitutional democracies and explores the idea that the way institutions are responsive to dissent determines the robustness of democracy, and ultimately, its legitimacy. What place dissenters have within a society, whether they enjoy personal safety, legal protection, and safe channels for their disclosure, are hallmarks of a good democracy, and of its sense of justice.

Author: Kate Kenny
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674239725
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Society needs whistleblowers, yet to speak up and expose wrongdoing often results in professional and personal ruin. Drawing on the stories of men and women who reported unethical and illegal conduct in corporations, Kate Kenny explains why this is so, and what must be done to protect those who have the courage to expose the truth.

Author: C. Fred Alford
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501712926
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
In a dark departure from our standard picture of whistleblowers, C. Fred Alford offers a chilling account of the world of people who have come forward to protest organizational malfeasance in government agencies and in the private sector. The conventional story—high-minded individual fights soulless organization, is persecuted, yet triumphs in the end—is seductive and pervasive. In speaking with whistleblowers and their families, lawyers, and therapists, Alford discovers that the reality of whistleblowing is grim. Few whistleblowers succeed in effecting change; even fewer are regarded as heroes or martyrs.Alford mixes narrative analysis with political insight to offer a frank picture of whistleblowing and a controversial view of organizations. According to Alford, the organization as an institution is dedicated to the destruction of the moral individualist. Frequently, he claims, the organization succeeds, which means that the whistleblowers are broken, unable to reconcile their actions and beliefs with the responses they receive from others. In addition to being mistreated by organizations, whistleblowers often do not receive support from their families and communities. In order to make sense of their stories, Alford claims, some whistleblowers must set aside the things they have always believed: that loyalty is larger than the herd instinct, that someone in charge will do the right thing, that the family is a haven from a heartless world. Alford argues that few whistleblowers recover from their experience, and that, even then, they live in a world very different from the one they knew before their confrontation with the organization.

Author: Tatiana Bazzichelli
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839457939
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today's information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin's Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within.

Author: Peer Jacob Svenkerud
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000210650
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Whistleblowing, Communication and Consequences offers the first in-depth analysis of the most publicized, and morally complex, case of whistleblowing in recent European history: the Norwegian national lottery, Norsk Tipping. With contributions from the whistleblower himself, as well as from key voices in the field, this book offers unique perspectives and insights into not only this fascinating case, but into whistleblowing and wrongdoing in organizations more broadly. An international team of scholars use fourteen different theoretical lenses to show the complex and multi-faceted nature of whistleblowing. The book begins with an ethnographic account by the whistleblower story and proceeds into an analysis of the literature and conceptual topics related to that whistleblowing incident to present the lessons that can be learnt from this extreme example of institutional failure. This fascinating, complex, and multi-theoretical book will be of great interest to scholars, students and industry leaders in the areas of public relations, corporate communication, leadership, corporate social responsibility, whistleblowing and organizational resistance. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Author: Tom Mueller
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698405102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
"A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed about the decline of our democracy." — New York Times-bestselling author Wendell Potter "Powerful...His extensively reported tales of individual whistleblowers and their often cruel fates are compelling...They reveal what it can mean to live in an age of fraud." — The Washington Post "Tom Mueller's authoritative and timely book reveals what drives a few brave souls to expose and denounce specific cases of corruption. He describes the structural decay that plagues many of our most powerful institutions, putting democracy itself in danger." —George Soros A David-and-Goliath story for our times: the riveting account of the heroes who are fighting a rising tide of wrongdoing by the powerful, and showing us the path forward. We live in a period of sweeping corruption -- and a golden age of whistleblowing. Over the past few decades, principled insiders who expose wrongdoing have gained unprecedented legal and social stature, emerging as the government's best weapon against corporate misconduct--and the citizenry's best defense against government gone bad. Whistleblowers force us to confront fundamental questions about the balance between free speech and state secrecy, and between individual morality and corporate power. In Crisis of Conscience, Tom Mueller traces the rise of whistleblowing through a series of riveting cases drawn from the worlds of healthcare and other businesses, Wall Street, and Washington. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than two hundred whistleblowers and the trailblazing lawyers who arm them for battle--plus politicians, intelligence analysts, government watchdogs, cognitive scientists, and other experts--Mueller anatomizes what inspires some to speak out while the rest of us become complicit in our silence. Whistleblowers, we come to see, are the freethinking, outspoken citizens for whom our republic was conceived. And they are the models we must emulate if our democracy is to survive.

Author: Wim Vandekerckhove
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134764006
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Establishing a policy and building a culture that helps to protect organizations from financial wrong-doing, criminal or civil liability and permanent damage to corporate reputation has become a central theme of contemporary corporate policies towards 'whistleblowing'. This book is amongst the first to provide a detailed and full-length analysis of the meaning and various justifications of whistleblowing policies. While the legitimization of organizational whistleblowing suggests an adaptation of organizations to public opinion, this book examines the wider legitimization whistleblowing policies have been given, considering whether the establishment of 'policies' genuinely leads to the implicit institutionalization of whistleblowing itself. The book's particular focus is upon what kinds of 'whistleblowing' societies and organizations actually want, and whether policies developed as a result meet expectations.

Author: Susan Fowler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525560149
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
“A powerful illustration of the obstacles our society continues to throw up in the paths of ambitious young women.” —The New York Times Book Review “Important . . . empowering.” —Gayle King, CBS This Morning "That [Fowler] became a whistle-blower and a pioneer of a social movement almost seems inevitable once you get to know her. Uber should have seen her coming.” —San Francisco Chronicle Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR Susan Fowler was just twenty-five years old when her blog post describing the sexual harassment and retaliation she'd experienced at Uber riveted the nation. Her post would eventually lead to the ousting of Uber's powerful CEO, but its ripples extended far beyond that, as her courageous choice to attach her name to the post inspired other women to speak publicly about their experiences. In the year that followed, an unprecedented number of women came forward, and Fowler was recognized by Time as one of the "Silence Breakers" who ignited the #MeToo movement. Here, she shares her full story: a story of extraordinary determination and resilience that reveals what it takes--and what it means--to be a whistleblower. Long before she arrived at Uber, Fowler's life had been defined by her refusal to accept her circumstances. She propelled herself from an impoverished childhood with little formal education to the Ivy League, and then to a coveted position at one of the most valuable companies in the history of Silicon Valley. Each time she was mistreated, she fought back or found a way to reinvent herself; all she wanted was the opportunity to define her own dreams and work to achieve them. But when she discovered Uber's pervasive culture of sexism, racism, harassment, and abuse, and that the company would do nothing about it, she knew she had to speak out—no matter what it cost her. Whistleblower takes us deep inside this shockingly toxic workplace and reveals new details about the aftermath of the blog post, in which Fowler was investigated and followed, hacked and threatened, to the point that she feared for her life. But even as it illuminates how the deck is stacked in favor of the status quo, Fowler's story serves as a crucial reminder that we can take our power back. Both moving personal narrative and rallying cry, Whistleblower urges us to be the heroes of our own stories, and to keep fighting for a more just and equitable world.

Author: Emanuela Ceva
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509529683
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Recent years have seen a number of whistleblowers risk their liberty to expose illegal and corrupt behaviour. Some have heralded their bravery; others see them as traitors. Can there be a moral duty to emulate their example and blow the whistle? In this book, leading political philosophers Emanuela Ceva and Michele Bocchiola draw on well-known cases, such as those of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, to probe the difference between permissible and dutiful whistleblowing. They argue that, insofar as whistleblowing is understood as an individual act of dissent, it falls short of constituting a duty, although it can be praiseworthy. Whistleblowing should, they contend, be seen as an institutional duty, embedded within the organizational practices of public accountability. This concise book will be invaluable for students and scholars of applied political theory, and political and professional ethics.

Author: Joshua Guitar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793639264
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Government whistleblowers contest authoritarian power. Yet, critical scholars have only minimally examined whistleblower discourses and hesitate to substantively interrogate the ideology of statism. In Dissent, Discourse, and Democracy: Whistleblowers as Sites of Political Contestation, the author addresses this exigency and critiques government whistleblowing discourses through an Anarchist lens, reifying a pattern of discursive statist behaviors. Upon exposing government malfeasance, whistleblowers and their corresponding symbolic designations endure an erasure of agency via abstraction. Joshua Guitar conceptualizes the totality of abstruction, identifying it both as a rhetorical manifestation of ideology and a method of critical rhetorical inquiry. The author reveals how whistleblowing, a quintessential tool of dissent within democracy, has been systematically constrained within the public forum and weaponized for statist interests. Scholars of political communication and rhetoric will find this book particularly interesting.