def

Whistle blowing:

 To blow the whistle on someone is to alert a third party that person has done, or is doing, something wrong. So, literally, “whistle-blowing” means that one makes a noise to alert others to misconduct. By blowing the whistle on misconduct in an organization, one alerts the organization to the fact that its stakeholders are being wrongfully harmed, or that they are at risk of harm [Adler N. J, 1983].

‘Whistle blowing’ may be defined as the action of an employee in disclosing evidence of wrongdoing including financial irregularity, fraud, serious maladministration arising from the deliberate commission of improper conduct, unethical activities which may be of a dangerous and criminal nature acts or omissions which create a risk to health, safety or the environment, within the organization to which they belong. It does not include mismanagement which arises from poor or weak management rather than malpractice. Whistle blowing is the Act of worker to report criminal acts of employer to proper authorities. In most states does not include notifying the media alone [Arnold D. F., 1991].

The act of making public or raising with regulators and others the misdeeds of employers, such as failure to follow safety legislation and health or the payment of bribes. Whistleblowers are protected by law as long as they follow certain procedures.

 Whistle blowing means the abuse or fraud by a company employee. The issue of denunciation made by an employee is primarily an ethical issue, because not always legal and financial control systems, implemented by companies, are able to complaint the moral impact of the decisions and behavior that managers or employees make have in relation to the perspective of corporate social responsibility. Whistle blowing have the types of internal or external.  The internal whistle blowing denotes when an employee done irregularities its observed at a higher official with the intention through internal measures; instead the whistle blowing is categorized being external when the internal whistle blowing was not successful or when the employee knows that only a public authority could resolve the deficiency,  the message of the employee who is "blow the whistle" may have, and usually it happens, a great impact on the environment in which the company operates with different implications.

As internal control tool, the whistle blowing has at least two aims:

I) to eliminate possible internal disabilities, specially those relating to discipline at job, this is related to the internal whistle blowing;

ii) Building an image of responsible company, ready to assume the errors on the one hand, and especially, the idea of the transmission of transparency and of information’s unethical or inconsistent with the ethical code of the company and immoral.

As new approach accessed by U.S companies, the whistle blowing is discussed in Romania and Western Europe. There are some questions related to the need to attract the attention to conduct fraudulent organizations against characterization of illegal behavior in the company [Barkema H. G., 1997]. 

Explanation:

Whistle blowing is the act by an employee of informing the public or higher management of unethical behavior by an employer or supervisor. There are frequent newspaper reports of cases in which an employee of a company has gone to the media with allegations of wrong doing by his employer or in which a government employee has disclosed waste or fraud. Whistle blowing is the act of reporting on unethical conduct within an organization to someone outside of the organization in an effort to discourage the organization from continuing the activity. In usual case, the charges are made by an employee or former employee who has been unable to obtain the attention of the organization’s management to the problem. Sometimes, whistle blowing is confined to within the organization where the whistle blower’s supervisor is bypassed in an appeal to higher management. An important issue is to determine the conditions under which engineers are justified in blowing the whistle. It is morally permissible for engineers to engage in whistle blowing when the following conditions are met:

1.      The harm that will be done by the product to the public is considerable and serious.

2.      Concerns have been made known to the superiors and got no satisfaction from their immediate superiors; all channels have been exhausted within the corporation including the board of directors.

3.      The whistle blowers must have documented evidence that would convince the reasonable, impartial observer that his or her view of the situation is correct and the company position is wrong.

4.      There must be strong evidence that releasing the information to the public would prevent the projected serious harm.

Clearly, a person engaging in whistle blowing runs considerable risk of being labeled a malcontent or of being charged with disloyalty and possibly being dismissed. The decision to blow the whistle requires great moral courage. Some far sighted companies have established the office of ombudsman or an ethics review committee to head off and solve these problems internally before they reach the whistle blowing stage [Brabeck M., 1984].

Types of whistle blowing:

Internal whistle blowing occurs when an employee goes over head of an immediate supervisor to report a problem to a higher level management. Or, all levels of management are bypassed, and the employee goes directly to the employee goes directly to the president of the company or the board of directors. It is kept within the organization. External whistle blowing occurs when the employee goes outside the company and reports wrongdoing to newspapers or law-enforcement authorities. Either type of whistle blowing is likely to be perceived as disloyalty. However, keeping it within the company is often seen as less serious than going outside of the company. Anonymous whistle blowing occurs when the employee who is blowing the whistle refuses to divulge his name when making accusations. These accusations might take the form of anonymous memos to upper management or anonymous phone calls to the police. The employee might also talk to the news media but refuses to let her name be used as the source of the allegations. Acknowledged whistle blowing, on the other hand, occurs when the employee puts his name behind the accusations and is willing to whistle blowing the security brought on by his accusations. Whistle blowing can be very bad from a corporation’s point of view because it can lead to distrust, disharmony, and an inability of employees to work together [Black B., 2001].

REFERENCES:

1.      Adler, N. J., Journal of International Business Studies, 1983.

2.      Arnold, D. F., Journal of Practice & Theory, 1991.

3.      Barkema, H. G., Journal of International Business Studies, 1997.

4.      Brabeck, M., Journal of Research in Personality, 1984.

5.      Black, B., Employee Relations, 2001.

6.      Birnberg, J. G., Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1988.

7.      Brody, R. G., American Business Review, 1998.

8.      Chanchani, S., Journal of Accounting Literature, 1999.

9.      Chow, C. W., Journal of Management Accounting Research, 2000.

10.  Chow, C. W., Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1999.

11.  Cohen, J, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavior Science, 1988.

12.  Cohen, J. R, Journal of Business Ethics, 1997.

13.  Cohen, J. R., Accounting Horizons, 1988.