我们生活在一个复杂的社会。我们做出的每一个决定都基于我们的健康、安全、经济和人权。有时做出的决定是由腐败，无能和懒惰，从而导致我们社会的道德标准的妥协。事故发生或腐败猖獗，因为员工知道错误的行为，但害怕失去他们的工作。
在现代社会中，举报的重要性越来越被认可为一个措施，以减少腐败和避免危险的情况下，鼓励披露不道德的，非法的或禁止的活动进行私人机构或政府。它有助于改善组织间文化，有助于提高内部管理和效率。
We live in a complicated society. Every decision that we make is based upon our health, safety, economic and human rights. At times the decisions made are by the corrupt, incompetent and lazy, which leads to the compromise of the ethical standards of our society. Accidents happen or corruption flourishes because of employees who know about the wrong doings but are afraid of losing their jobs.
In the modern society, the importance of whistle blowing is increasingly being recognized as a measure to reduce corruption and avoid dangerous situations by encouraging the disclosure of unethical, illegal or prohibited activities performed by private institutions or the government. It also helps to improve the inter-organizational culture and helps improve internal management and efficiency.
Definition
Whistle blowing is a process by which a person claims an occurrence of wrongdoing in or by an organization. Usually the person belongs to the organization and is at a personal risk himself. The allegations made may be internal (to people within the organization e.g. colleagues, subordinates etc.) or external (to people outside the organization e.g. law enforcement agencies, media, regulators etc.).
U.S academics Marcia P.Miceli and Janet P.Near set the academic standard for whistleblowing in 1982 as "Disclosure of organizations' member's (former or current) disclosure of illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices under the control of their employees to persons or organizations that may be able to effect action".
They have defined whistle blowing as a four step process:
A triggering event occurs involving questionable, unethical or illegal activities, and this leads to an employee to consider blowing the whistle.
The employee engages in decision making, assessing the activity and whether it involves wrong doing, gathering additional information, and discussing situation with others.
The employee exercises voice by blowing the whistle; alternatively the employee could leave the organization, or remain silent out of loyalty or neglect.
The organizational members react to, and possibly retaliate against the whistleblower.
Common Reactions
Around the globe, whistle blowers have been hailed as heroes or selfless martyrs for revealing fraud and corruption in organizations and preventing potential disasters. They may relate to the cover up harmful diseases like SARS in China to the revealing of theft of millions of dollars of public money in Kenya.
However, in many cases whistleblowers face severe ramifications for their actions. They end up losing their jobs and being ostracized for their activities. Some may be charged with violation of employee contracts and the dangers might be physical at extreme.
It is therefore probable that a lot of people refrain from blowing the whistle due to the fear of retaliation or damaging relationships at work or private life.
Utility of Whistle blowing
Information revealed by whistleblowers is usually highly critical for the society. In China, Dr Jiang Yanyong possibly saved a million lives by revealing the extent to which the SARS virus had spread even though he was ordered by the authorities not to. In the corporate world, Sherron Watkins of Enron blew the whistle over the financial problems of the company internally which eventually led to the exposure of the scam and the arrest of the top officials.
Whistle blowing is also important for improving the internal efficiency of the organization since the employees are the first to know about the problems and early disclosure can lead to remedy of the problem sooner. A 2002 study by KPMG found that around 25 percent of problems reported in an company in Australia was by whistleblowers while the same statistic was 44 percent in Africa.
The essence of whistleblowing lies in the fact t
