Whistleblower Protection Essay

Abstract
Whistleblowing has now became an important aspect to organizations and it reflects governance aspect of the organization. This paper explains problems faced by Whistleblowers over the world. This paper also deals with the legislations on whistleblower protection in India and why some countries are hesitating to introduce whistleblower protection law. It deals with reasons for such hesitations. Do we really need whistle blower policy as legislation? The main question to be answered is that whether having a whistleblower protection law is actually providing protection? This is answered by explaining why the laws are unable to protect whistleblowers from all aspects.
Key Words: Whistleblower, Whistleblower protection law, reasons.
1. Introduction

A ‘whistleblower’ is one who reports the concerns on illegal, immoral, unethical conduct of people in an organization or of an organization to the employer or higher authorizes or the government organizations and officials. Whistleblowers can be employees, customers, suppliers, competitors, contracts, general public.
2. Whistleblowing
Whistleblowing is of two types. They are external and internal. In internal whistleblowing, a person that is whistleblower notifies or reports about the unethical or corrupt practices of a person or a group to his/her supervisor or department head or the Board. While in external whistle blowing, a person reports the wrongdoing to external organizations, institutions, Media and regulators.
Often, employee is in dilemma whether to report the suspicious activities internally in the organization or to external bodies. In most of the cases, internal whistleblowing is better than external whistle blowing as this gives a company to rectify itself and monitor better while external whistleblowing hampers the organization’s reputation and the loyalty of the employer is questioned and the employee’s environment might become unfriendly in the organization. Sherron Watkins in Enron case is an example of internal

In modern form, it is now cyber ostracism where the individual doesn’t receive any emails or office memos. In what so ever form or shape it is, ostracism has very high impact on both psychological as well as physical level. Employees are inherently hesitant to speak out and this might be attributed to the risk or fear of ostracism and other social risks. Whistleblowers are often ostracized by fellow employees, peers, as they feel guilt of association, the fear that they might lose their job if they got any closer to the whistleblowers. This is also a type retaliatory technique and effective one. This is most likely to happen and cheaper as it cannot be proven and it is not likely to violate any