Tina Whitaker
Whistleblowing and Ethics
Upper Iowa University
February 11, 2018
Introduction Whistleblowers were never treated with hospitality. In general, 90% of whistleblowers lost their jobs or were demoted, regardless of the industry; 27% faced lawsuits; 26% had psychiatric or medical referrals; 17% lost their homes, and 8% went bankrupt (Waters 2008). As highly righteous as whistleblowers are, they also suffer severe consequences. In Hughes Aircraft case, the company 's employees who decided to blow the whistle, Goodearl and Aldred were extremely affected and treated unfairly, so much so that " [Goodearl] and her husband had to file for bankruptcy, and Aldred was on welfare for a year before she could find another job."(The Hughes Whistleblowing Case, n.d.). Hence, the focus of this paper is to determine whether or not whistle blowing is really worth the trouble, even though it is almost always ethically correct.
What are Goodearl’s obligations/responsibilities Goodearl has several responsibilities. First, Goodearl has responsibility to herself and her family, for one cannot survive with proper sources of income to exchange for goods and services. In this situation, she would act out of her self-interest. Second, she has responsibility to Hughes Microelectronics because she is an employee of the company and is responsible for the testing floor operation. Because of her responsibility to which the company delegates, Goodearl is obligated to
You succinctly described how the subculture in the workplace can create instances like Detective Serpico experienced. As you note, humans have a hard time dealing with being told they have done wrong as it is connected with shame. Effective leadership is necessary to provide integrity and accountability. Detective Serpico’s testimony proves how dangerous it can be for whistleblowers in an organization that has an unethical subculture. As a profession, law enforcement is one in which limited transparency is required to protect justice.
From what this case turns out to be, as determined by the facts surrounding it, if our organization was set up such that our supervisors have the power to fire employees under their supervision, the company could have potentially found its entangled in a Sarbanes-Oxley lawsuit. There is no doubt that had this morally upright secretary been fired for standing her ground in the face of our rogue supervisor 's demand for her to cook the books the company could have been in violation not only for attempting to file a fraudulent expense account but for taking retaliatory action against her for refusing to do such. On the other hand had the secretary connived with her boss, the supervisor and prepared the false expense report, the company 's reputation could have again been in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A federal law that prohibits publicly traded companies such as ours, in engaging in fraudulence accounting and financial practices. Such a scenario could have ruined the corporation 's reputation and expose it to an enormous fine from the Federal Trade Commission.
The NASW Code of Ethics’ Connection to the Sanchez family Case The Sanchez family is a multigenerational family, not unlike other families living in the United States. Current person-in-environment conditions and lifestyle choices hinder the capability to improve their quality of life. Intervention from competent and committed professionals will change the dynamic challenges the family faces.
One of the most important rules to be aware of with publicly traded companies is the Sarbones Oxley Act Section 806. Sox act protects “whistle-blowers” from receiving any negative actions regarding stepping up and reporting actions/practices
I enjoy reading your post; you provided sound knowledge of the ACA and NAADAC Code of Ethics. “The NAADAC Code of Ethics was written to govern the conduct of its member and it is the accepted standard of conduct for addiction professionals certified by the National Certification Commission.” Therefore, it is the responsibility of the addiction professional to safeguard the integrity of the counseling relationship and to ensure that the client is provided with services that are most beneficial. In all areas of function, the addiction professional is likely to encounter individuals who are vulnerable and exploitable. In such relationships he/she seeks to nurture and support the development of a relationship of equals rather than to take unfair
In regards to the scenario of the patient Cindy who had an affair while being married, one of the red flags that I noticed was AACC Code 1-143 counseling with family, friends and acquaintances. According to the scenario, Cindy, as well as her family, attend the same church as the counselor, but also know the counselor very well. This was a breach in ethics on the counselor’s part, because in the AACC code, it states in Code 1-143, “Christian counselors do not provide counseling to close family or friends.” (Clinton, Ohlschlager, and Hart; pg. 269). The counselor has already broken the ethics code by giving Cindy counseling advice, which is part of the AACC code 1-145 (pg.269).
Mr. Carnell explained his outrage effectively, while praising the employees who came to work and offering a solution to the problem he faced with the ones he scolded. On the other hand, Mr. Carnell lack the ability to fully understand how this memo and its actions would impact others. Although, Mr. Carnell thought he wrote ethically, he neglected to fully comprehend why certain employees failed to report to work. In reality, employees might have had adequate reasons for not reporting to their duties at PNC Bank.
The ongoing issue of unethical practices in justice professions can be very unidentifiable if a person does not know what to look for. To be an ethical person it is essential to understand what it means to be ethical to oneself. A person with good ethics is someone who portrays a strong moral character, with the ability to determine the difference between good and evil duties. Duties refers to the actions a person takes in order to be considered a commendable act (Pollock, 2015).
Whistleblowing is an employee divulging information about misconduct typically in the workplace. (Department for Business Innovation & Skills, 2015). Whistleblowing is important for the employee to feel able to disclose wrongdoing in the workplace to their manager for further escalation and investigation to occur (Department for Business Innovation & Skills, 2015). The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 helps to protect whistleblowers from detrimental treatment from employers and colleagues. This act helps induce equality in the workplace helping to deter unfair treatment of the
Whistle-blowing Introduction Whistle-blowing is the act taken by an employee or former employee of disclosing what he believes to be unethical or illegal behaviour taken by his employer. There are two ways in which a person can disclose information. It can be done by internal whistle-blowing or external whistle-blowing. Internal whistle-blowing would be considered when an employee discloses unethical or illegal behaviour to higher management while external whistle-blowing would be when the information was disclosed to the public. The duty to be a whistle-blower over rides the duty that you have to your client or employer.
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
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW The review of literature of this study broadly focused on whistleblowing. There have been several attempts to define whistleblowing, but certainly there is no generally accepted definition. According to Near and Miceli (1985), which are often referred by researchers, whistleblowing is a process whereby a current or former member of an organization discloses practices or activities believe to be illegal, immoral or illegitimate, to those who may be able to effect change. The practices or activities can be refer to personal misbehavior such as stealing, waste, mismanagement, safety problems, sexual harassment, unfair discrimination and legal violations (Dasgupta & Kesharwani, 2010).
Furthermore, (Argent & Tonts, 2014), described that Australian economy is highly applicable to the internalization as it provides the intellectual tools to effectively understand the twist which actions of desperate government can create. Hence, for the people of Australia, it is suggested that they need to choose the whistle blowing because it allows them to speak up on their rights and wages. (Youlden, Youl, Soyer, Aitken, & Baade, 2014), reported that whistle blowing is an ethical system that allows union within the organization to talk about the unethical, immoral activities in the organization. Moreover, it also refers to the time that a member of the company tells other person related to immoral and ethical practices, in case the telling
The whistle blower is the voluntary act that done by a person who have bad feelings towards the organization done such illegal or improper conduct. According to Mathieu (2007) the act of disclosing unethical or illegal behavior of organization the top management even to external parties or public. The person who blows the whistle can be either existing or even previous employee, stated by Rusniah Ahmad (2006). 1.1 Prosocial behavior theory The whistle blower act have similarities towards the prosocial behavior.
Introduction Nowadays, ethics and integrity has played a vital role in our daily lives especially in the workplace. Ethics is defined as being concerned with judgements involved in the moral decision, whether it is good or bad, true and fair (Velasquez 1999); whereas, integrity is defined as the honesty and having strong moral principles in reporting. The purpose of this assignment is to find out and understand how importance of ethics and integrity has played in the business and workplace. Responses and Evidences Why compliance with Ethics and Integrity?