Ethics in the world of Business

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sector.

Then, in this class we dealt with whistle blowing, and firstly we began to discuss about a potential definition about it to conclude that the whistle blowing is the release of information by a member of an organization that is evidence of illegal or immoral conduct in an organization that is not right in the public interest. We spoke about all the important elements that a whistle blower has to act with such as the fact that blowing the whistle can be done only by a person who works in the organization or who worked before, the fact that to blow the whistle should not be done take revenge.

To illustrate the theme of it chapter we studied the case of Edward Snowden a former employee of the CIA and NSA that released in 2013, through several newspapers, many revelations about the NSA mass surveillance programs. He has revealed the existence of a US government eavesdropping system launched under the guise of fighting terrorism. Today, Edward Snowden got temporary asylum to 3 years in Russia.

Then, we made a discussion with the class to compare our opinion about: Is Whistleblowing right? First of all, we all agree that blowing the whistle is not totally fair for the organization because the employees may at first refer to the direction what is the issues they want to speak about. We said also that all of the employees of an organization have to respect it and to be loyal. What will be your interest to act against your company? You should have the same aim of the company you are working for. To justify that point, we focused on the Loyal Agent Argument, which is an argument against the right of an employee to blow the whistle. The main explanations are the fact that an employee is the agent of an employer and that it main duty is to act for the interest of the principal. The main issue that we underlined in class was :Loyalty to whom? We spoke about the questioning of loyalty to the boss, to the organization or to the society in general. For example, we saw that according to a theory of Hirschman, those who speak up are the most loyal because they want to get back the organization on the right way. Moreover, we debate about the justification of whistle blowing like the ethical way of serving the public interest often at a great risk. Due to that great risk that whistle blowers takes we spoke about the legal protections for the whistle-blowers. There are some acts to protect them but it is not enough efficient. For example, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 prohibits the retaliation against federal employees who report instances of waste and corruption in government. Indeed, there are a lot of arguments against Whistle-Blower protection and arguments for Whistle-Blower protection. The main idea that came to our mind in class was that it is justify to blow the whistle and to be protected if the goal is to report something dangerous and to protect individuals.

• Own reflection

According to me, the act of blow the whistle can be justify of ethical and unethical. Indeed it depends in how this has been made. My own thoughts say that if you are witnessing something wrong you first have to report it to your manager or the direction you are working for. Because how will you know if the direction should has do something if you blow the whistle first? Then, when an employee reports the fact to the direction and they are just keeping the eyes closed he can decide to blow the whistle; but he has to study before the major consequences that will happen. I think that the whistle blowers are very brave because they take real risks in the name of serving the community, they often puts in risk their financial or physical health, their privacy such as their family and friends, but also their personal safety and their image. The important thing that draws my attention is the fact that whistle blowers do not have enough protection against the dangerous retaliation that they risk. Improvement has to be done to insure to them better protection but we know that it is very hard to find a universal way of thinking for that action. Personally, I am in favour of blow the whistle if the aim is to report something dangerous to any group of individuals, environment etc… But I underline that we have first to report it to people inside the organization to see if the problem can be solved in the company. I will add the example of Erin Brockovich who is one of the most well known whistleblower. While conducting research, she discovered health issues were linked to the presence of hexavalent chromium in wastewater from a nearby Pacific Gas & Electric plant. PG&E had denied the chemical could be toxic, but Erinn Brockovich’s findings showed that it was linked to cases of cancer. In 1996, PG&E settled for $628 million, (the largest settlement in U.S. history at the time) to the court and to people affected by the toxic chemical.