Essays on Whistle Blowing

Introduction:

The internal environment of a company is dependent to a large extent on the ethical attitudes among the employees. Often, it is not easy for employees to take moral and ethical decisions that go against the monetary interests of the company. Employees making an ethical decision adverse to the interests of the employer usually forms a part of whistle blowing and is often met with retributions and recriminations from the employer. While employees have some obligations to their company and to their employer, they also have wider obligations to the society and to the country at large. ‘Whistle blowing’ ...

The History of Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing is a significant accountability tool in today’s corporate world. The practice is traceable to as early as the eighth century. However, in essence, it truly came into light when the Lincoln administration adopted the first ever whistleblowing law in 1863. Dubbed the Federal False Claims Act, the law outlawed the use of false statements in the name of blowing the whistle against an organization. In 1989, the Bush administration adopted the Whistleblowers Protection Act (1989). This law acted as a form of protection to federal whistleblowers who expose the government’s wasteful and fraudulent practices (Barnett, 1992). ...

The accounting scandal Toshiba faces spanned over seven years, involved millions of dollars, and resulted in resignation of several top level management officers. The CEOs appeared to be directly related to scandal. While they did not implicitly instruct anyone in accounting to “cook the books” they placed pressure on the accounting unit and subordinate staff to produce the desired numbers (Carpenter, 2015). The corporate culture of obedience to high level management played a large factor in the subordinate staff to obey the directives regardless of the incorrect nature of the reporting. The scandal was a result of over-inflated profits ...

InstructorCourse:

Whistle blowing refers to the act of keeping employees in check. Proponents of whistle blowing dictate that, it is the mandate of employees to ensure that their employees do not violate the terms and conditions that are supposed to guide the work environment. However, it is significant to note that, everybody is not pro whistle blowing; some people argue out that whistle blowing is against the principles that guide the position of an employer before his employees. Due to the overwhelming contestations that have featured in the field of Whistle blowing, the following theories have been devised by Davis, ...

Question One: Insider Trading

For the longest time possible, the concept of insider trading in business has been considered unfair, inequitable and against the spirit of fair competition in business. Insider trading is opposed for the simple reason that it does not afford all players in the market all the requisite information used in arriving at decisions as to whether to invest or not. Two critical arguments are availed against insider trading. These are the property rights and the fairness principle. This paper shall discuss the two arguments in much detail.

It is argued that insider trading dispenses with the principle of fairness ...

- Discuss in detail the concept of Utilitarianism and its impact on society.

Utilitarianism holds that a proper course of action is one that maximizes utility by reducing suffering and maximizing happiness. The concept of utilitarianism adds that the moral worth appended t an action is solely determined by its resulting outcome. Theorists add that the greatest measure of right or wrong is the happiness of the greatest number of people. The influence of utilitarianism is widespread and permeates politics, law and economics. In law, the concept of utilitarianism justifies the punishment intended to preempt further crimes by protecting the community from the offender or rehabilitating him. In politics, utilitarianism supports democracy as a ...

Introduction

The United States has adopted a culture that promotes whistle blowing in most industries. Research indicates that organizations without proper mechanisms for reporting unethical behavior report twice as high fraud related losses compared to those that do not. Johnston (2005) stated that over 40% of all fraud cases in such companies are detected by whistleblowers in comparison to 4% by internal audits, 11% through external audits, 1% by accident, and 18% through internal controls. This shows that the whistle blowers are important and therefore should be protected by the law. However, while the whistleblower protection laws are written to protect ...

The first approach to whistle blowing condemns whistle blowers as people who rat on their own organizations or companies, thus, undermining the authority’s hierarchy and teamwork (Martin, 402). Although an approach, Martin feels that corporations should note that for employees loyalty to the organization is not an absolute moral principle, and thus, it is the role of the public to protect whistleblowers. The second approach suggests that although whistle blowing is a necessary evil and at times tagged admirable when it happens, all around it is always bad news (Martin, 402). This is simply because it disrupts and damages ...

Philosophy

Introduction Ethical behavior is an essential requirement in any activity. All Individuals have a responsibility to perform their activities in a professional manner within the acceptable moral ethics. Ethical standards are upheld both in the national constitution and corporate constitution of any company. Any individual or corporate that violates any outlined ethical law is liable to prosecution in civil and industrial courts. Ethical misconduct in the company range from inappropriate dressing, corruption, nepotism, racial discrimination and many other ethical frauds. To safeguard the reputation of an organization against a fall out with the society, the culprits should be held accountable for ...

The term whistleblower refers to an individual who raises his/her concerns against the unethical or illegal activities of the organization. The employee may raise concerns either internally that is, within the organization or externally that is, any legal institution or organization (EthicalSystems.org). The misconduct of the firm that is brought under the spotlight may include activities such as; law violation, rule and regulation violation, threat to the organization’s stakeholders, fraud, health and safety violations, or corruption. As a result of bringing into notice, the unlawful activities of the organization whistleblowers often experience the reprisal from their fellow colleagues. In ...

1. The case study is focused on describing unethical practices adopted by CompCARE a subsidiary of PharmaCARE. The company is involved in workplace discrimination, and not managing safe appropriate working conditions. All people involve in the processes and getting impacted by the ParmaCARE operations are stakeholders of the scenario. Major stakeholders in the case are: PharmaCARE, CompCARE, WellCo, employees working in the CompCARE, people of Colberia, and regulatory authorities of Colberia. WellCo recently acquired CompCARE and will get impacted by all the decisions taken by the old management in the past. Employees are facing major health challenges due to ...

The origin of whistle blowing can be adduced back to the provisions that are brought to book in common law. Common law referred to the laws that were enacted to protect affairs of people in medieval times. They were based on the common principles that guided the affairs of people. It is from this instance that whistle blowing was devised. As a common phenomenon, most employers were acting in a manner that can better be described as ultra vires in the exercise of their duties. In essence, whistle blowing was devised as the position that could act as a guide and a means ...

Abstract

A whistle-blower or a whistleblower an individual who reveals the alleged dishonest, misconduct, or illegal activity that occurs in an institute. The alleged misconduct is in classification of numerous means; for instance, a contravention of a rule, law, bylaw or a direct risk to public interest, such as health and safety contravention, corruption and fraud. Whistle-blowers might make their accusations internally, for instance, to other individuals in the accused institution or externally to, law enforcement agencies, regulators, to groups, to the media or concerned with the subject matter (Nader, 167). The Continental Congress ratified the first ever whistle-blower protection law in the ...

Current Situation

The situation presents the unethical practices by Enron’s Chief Financial Officer, Andy Fastow during a period of massive violations of ethical and accounting practices. Fastow started Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) such as LJM which unethically grew and boomed out of Enron’s shares and assets (Arbogast). There was a serious conflict of interest since Fastow owned a big share of LJM. Before I joined, Global Finance as lawyer in the Tax Department, I had heard of LJM being a special purpose vehicle to purchase assets from Enron. I obtained a memo addressed to Enron’s executives in which Fastow sought exemption from Enron’ ...

Introduction

Whistle blowing are actions of individuals say in a company the employee or former employee to make know the hidden conducts of his or her counter parts to the superior internal authority for instance the misconduct of the manager or to the external superiors or the public. The moral permissibility or requirement of whistle blowing is the greatest controversial issue due to hits double effect. Therefore, one has to make choices on which effect to give chance that are whether to betray the company or counterpart (humanity). For one to make a decision one has to clearly define and understand ...

Introduction

Whistle blowing refers to the process through which an employee or employees reveal information concerning the organization that is harmful and detrimental in nature. Often, the information is brought out to the public domain do the chagrin of the organization and its management. Whistle blowing should be divorced from investigations, spying or other kinds of cover ups and revelations. It also must be noted that whistle blowing must not be in bad faith or in the interest of the employee who reveals the information. This paper shall examine the elements of whistle blowing with a keen coverage on the paradoxes ...

Some Paradoxes Associated With Whistle Blowing.

The term whistle blower refers to an individual or an informant who exposes wrongdoing within the organization with the objective or hopes to stop it. On the other hand, a paradox refers to the inconsistency between the theory of our systematic understanding of whistle blowing and what we actually know about whistle blowing. This paper provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of the paradoxes behind whistle blowing. However, there is nothing morally problematic about whistle blowing because after all. This is because revealing of the information that has not been revealed is part of the function of science. However, research ...

Part I

The retired executive director of the Florida Commission on Ethics joined coalition recently challenging the pending legislation, which is aimed at improving the ethical climate of state government. He claimed that if the legislation would be enacted as it currently is, would serve the purpose of protecting politicians more than the public (Cotterell 2013). He singled out the restrain on legislators of dual employment from working for the local government entities whose funding could be shaped in the state budget. He also said that despite the advantages of electronic filling of financial disclosures, this entirely depends on the willingness ...

Whistle blowing is a significant policy in promoting organizational ethics. It is the disclosure by members of an organization of any form of illegal, illegitimate, unethical or immoral activities under their employer’s control. These practices could be done either by colleague employees or by senior members or administrators of the organization. Whistle blowing in organizations allows for any form of wrong doing to be reported or brought to public attention through different forms of disclosure. Disclosures through whistle blowing could also be reporting matters of public interests that were being infringed by some people in an organization or the ...

Whistle blowing or public interest disclosure as known in legal jargon refers to a situation when an employee divulges information about a wrongdoing or malpractice that they discover in the workplace. Whistle blowing does not cover cases of poor performance, settlement of personal issues or lack of professionalism. Whistle blowing can only be used where cases of wrongdoing, malpractice and graft are evident, whether done unknowingly or deliberately (Dehn, 2001).

Discussion

I do not think Joseph Wellington handled and answered the question asked by the participant appropriately. When asked the question, Mr. Wellington did not give a clear answer as to what the ...

MEMO

The manager of the Quality Assurance Department has brought to my attention a fault in one of our toys. A routine test revealed traces of lead in the whistles, which are part of the elementary package, destined for shipment at the end of the week. This is an issue of considerable concern because of the potential risks it presents to our target users and the cost implications of altering the shipment plans.

The memo from the Quality assurance manager revealed that there were traces of lead in the metallic whistles, which were above the allowable levels in the USA for ...

The Ethical dilemmas of WikiLeaks

Wikileaks is an international company that publishes unidentified submissions and leaks the information in the document while still hiding its source. A self-described nonprofit making organization was initially launched in Australia, in the year 2006 under the sunshine press. The organization has released a considerable number of documents, which have become indispensable news items. The first document to be released was the equipment expenditure and holdings of the war in Afghanistan and the Kenyan corruption. In April 2010, they published footage on the Baghdad airstrike that left many Iraqi reporters killed by an Apache helicopter. In July, the same year, ...

In each and every organization whistle blowing should be controlled. As an employer there is the need to minimize any available need by the employees within the organization to blow the whistle. When such kind of information become public, the organizations image may be harmed and also the future prospects of the company may be affected. An out of the ordinary corporate approach in trying to stop whistle blowing with its resulting bad effects to the organization is to fire all those whistleblowers and also trying to intimidate all others who may be in the likelihood of doing the ...

SECURITY REPORTING

Joseph Wellington did not handle the question in an appropriate manner as he failed to answer the question asked and give supporting evidence of how the company handled Qui tam. If I was in Wellington’s position I would have explained to the participant that Qui tam is a term used to refer to a law suit initiated by a private citizen against a company for violating a regulation set by the government. The private citizen who initiates such a law suit is called a whistle blower (Doyle, 2010, p. 7). The whistle blowing in this case gets a percentage of the penalty that the company will ...