Sissela Bok and Robert Larmer on whistleblowing ethics

Business Cases

Does Blowing the Whistle Violate Company Loyalty?

Summary of Sides

Whistle blowers face both practical and ethical dilemmas in deciding whether or not to shed light on internal workings of businesses or other organizations that pose a threat to the public interest or otherwise promote unethical or damaging practices. According to philosopher Sissela Bok, there is a clear moral violation in an act of whistle blowing and the destruction of company loyalty that it represents. Bok claims, in fact, that there are "jarring" and "bitter" elements of whistle blowing that earn it a certain label as a moral violation: "dissent, breach of loyalty, and accusation" (p. 178). The primary argument Bok makes is that the whistle blower necessarily destroys trust between themselves and the organization when they blow the whistle, and this carries an inherent ethical breach. Bok also spends a great deal of time discussing the appearance and the possibility of a conflict of interest in whistle blowing, suggesting that appearance alone is reason to possibly refrain from whistle blowing.

Robert a. Larmer takes the opposite view, suggesting that employees might not even bear their employees any duty of loyalty in the first place and that the duty to public interest and larger ethical principles is paramount, anyway. In addition, with moral principles as primary goals, Larmer insists that, "to the degree that an action is genuinely immoral, it is impossible that it is in the agent's best interests" (p. 187). In other words, an employee isn't harming an organization by blowing the whistle because blowing the whistle is meant to place the organization on a more moral track. All of this defends the act of whistle blowing from moral and ethical perspectives.

Analysis

Given both of the arguments above, it must be determined that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Neither author insists that the issue is black and white, but both ultimately conclude that the act is either good or bad based on the merits of the act and ignore the messy possibility that it could be both. Employees who blow the whistle are violating certain ethical duties to their companies and potentially to their families and themselves due to the retaliation that is likely to follow, but they are upholding their ethical duties to society at large when whistles are blown. Similarly, failing to bring attention to abuses is a failure of ethical duty to the general public even though it upholds duty to the company. The idea that employees do not have a duty to the companies they work must be dismissed as ludicrous; if this were true, there would be a great many problems faced by businesses.

In the United States' banking industry, whistle blowing is a highly sensitive issue in the wake of the recent financial turmoil and the "Occupy" protests. Pressure by the public for greater transparency and fairness in banking provides a compelling manifestation of the good served by blowing the whistle, however there is also a great deal of likelihood that events and actions will be misunderstood by the general public and that problems might be seen where none exist. Whistle blowing should be governed by legality, with only serious and harmful breaches warranting a violation of company trust in order to serve the public good.

Issue 11: Is Employer Monitoring of Employee Social Media Justified?

Analysis

Elzweig and Pepples make a much more compelling argument on this issue, and of key importance is their clear limitation of employer's rights to access and monitor employee's social media within the confines of the law. Employers should perhaps hold themselves to a higher standard, and following Elzweig and Pepple's opening line of reasoning employers should not pry any deeper than an average member of the public. That is, employers should not require employees to give them broader access to their social media as a condition of employment, and if an employee has all non-friends or non-followers blocked then the company should consider themselves out of luck. What employees do in their private lives can have an effect on the company, but only of these private lives are made public; if employees take care to keep their social media appropriate for public consumption or blocked form public view then employers have no cause to worry and certainly no justification for demanding greater access or knowledge than the public has.

Banking institutions are no different than other companies in this regard. Though there is likely to be greater scrutiny of individuals in powerful or authoritative positions in banks, again what is kept private should remain private and only what is public should matter to the company. A bank manager that leads an excessive lifestyle while homes are foreclosed on might be unseemly and should not advertise this on social media, perhaps, and would warrant some comment by the employer. If the media can't be seen by the public, however, it should not matter to the employer.