Whistleblower HR Management and the

Whistleblower HR Management and the Whistleblower Protection Act The last decade in American corporate culture represents a nadir of ethical performance and effective organizational stewardship. These two realities have interceded to promote a period of deep corruption, aggressive shortsightedness and an absence of safeguards against rampant corporate abuses.

The outcome is a seriously negative context from a Human Resource Management perspective, as major corporations have shown themselves to be increasingly less secure job occupational contexts and their cultures have come to extent greater concession to myriad abuses of sound management or ethical appropriateness. One of the key shortcomings in the area of private corporate orientation derives from a failure of accountability such as that which is designed to protect against the same realities in public management.

It is to this end that the research here conducted examined the Whistleblower Protection Act, which was passed in 1989 with the intention of creating legal deterrence for obstructing or failing to address the claims of a whistleblower concerning corruption, excess or mismanagement by superiors or on a systemic level. Description of Topic: The legislation in question would be designed particularly with the intent to reign in abused in government agencies, beginning with the federal level and descending through other areas of governance.

Accordingly, the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission denotes that "a federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if it takes or fails to take (or threatens to take or fail to take) a personnel action with respect to any employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee or applicant that he or she reasonably believes evidences a violation of a law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety." (SEC, 1) the legislation is designed to promote a context in which those who would perform this duty as a sense of responsibility to the public good would do so without fear of retaliation.

As we enter into a consideration of the principles implied by this legislation, particularly through the lens of a decade of corporate corruption, it is clear that such legislation should be strengthened and applied on a private level as well. Implications for Management: The implications to management of the Whistleblower Act should be significant. This is because they are designed to create a context in which organizations are required to establish a system through which whistleblowing activity is facilitated and protected in advance of any such occurrence.

Thus, those that would report malfeasance must be assured preemptively by the organization's structure such that the intention to act as a whistleblower would not be dissuaded by fear of its inherent risk to professional security and standing within the organization. Beyond this, there is an inbuilt intention for such legislation to function as a deterrent for those organizations that would otherwise behave out of accordance with their legal responsibilities.

According to the source provided by Whitaker (2007), "when Congress first enacted the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA) in 1989, it stated that the intent of the legislation was to: 'strengthen and improve protection for the rights of Federal employees, to prevent reprisals, and to help eliminate wrongdoing within the Government." (Whitaker, CRS-1) Among the avenues which it made possible for the achievement of this goal would be the protection of those with the capacity to help achieve said goal by reporting "a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety." (Whitaker, CRS-2) Given that this regulation was passed in 1989 and here, two decades hence, we have experienced an eruption of unchecked corruption in both government and private industry, it is clear that the vast array of limitations to this legislation has had markedly negative consequences in both the spheres of government and corporate management.

Not the lease of these limitations is the fact that the law in question only directly applied to federal agencies. For those who might have functioned as internal whistleblowers to intervene with such abuses as transpired in companies like Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Lehman Brothers and Madoff Enterprises, just to name a few of the most noted offenders.

Cultures of greed, corruption and misrepresentation helped to facilitate a massive transfer of wealth, substantial enough to suggest that a denial of awareness on the part of personnel at such organizations is nothing short of implausible. Therefore, we can presume that an absence or real protections for would-be whistleblowers in private enterprises would help to accommodate a wave of corruption every bit as destructive to the public as any government indiscretion such as the Whistleblower Protection Act was designed to address.

Beyond this, there are indications that the federal legislation lacks the proper mechanisms even to serve as a template for that which might address the failures in private regulation. The article by Fischer (1991) provides myriad examples in which exceptions and clauses relating to the Whistleblower Protection Act have made it essentially toothless. Specifications such as that which denotes that only certain 'covered employees' qualify for the protections afforded by the act are indicative of a piece of legislation deeply laden with loopholes.

As Fisher indicates, this is especially problematic because these loopholes create a false sense of security for whistleblowers that they are somehow protected from retaliatory action. The anecdotal indications provided by Fisher would suggest that the various exceptions written into the WPA have made it all but impotent for those intending to intervene with unethical company practices. The outcome then, is that leaders in management or personnel who attempt to report wrongdoing under the assumption of protection are particularly vulnerable to job loss or retaliation.

Overcoming Ethical Dilemmas: There is a clear ethical imperative to take some action to better facilitate intervention in the face of systemic corruption. At present, this must take the form of better and more pervasive legislation promoting more effective and more widely administered protection for whistleblowers. From the federal perspective invoked by the WPA, there remains a direct interest in refining existing laws to make these protections more pronounced and realistic.

Thus, a designated congressional team "is acting promptly to pass federal whistleblower rights as free standing legislation, after Senate conferees objected to including identical safeguards as amendments to the stimulus law." (GAP, 1) In addition to these efforts, the ethical dilemmas with which personnel may find themselves faced in this business.