Question

1. Provide your own definition of whistle-blowing? What do you think it involves and who does it involve?
2. Would whistle-blowing be unnecessary if companies had no secrets? Explain the relationship among secrecy, transparency, and whistle-blowing. Now offer up one case in which a whistle-blower might be necessary even without secrecy policies in place.
3. Finally, consider the following: Would you blow the whistle on yourself? If the answer is no, how might you nevertheless defend blowing the whistle on someone else? If the answer is yes, when and why?

Answer 1

Whistleblowing is the act of informing the public or the authorities regarding and unethical or illegal actions or things that a company is doing by an employee of a company. Whistleblowing involves the person or the employee who informs the authorities i.e the whistleblower, the person who does the illegal things inside the company, the company and its employees, the public authorities and the public in few cases.

Whistleblowing is necessary even if companies have no secrets as a person within the company might be doing the illegal thing without other people's knowledge.

Secrecy is keeping things secret so that competitors do not get any access or knowledge about yr strategic directions and decisions. Transparency is doing things in a proper and legal manner without hiding anything. Transparency is also providing all the information to the relevant authorities and public and be open to any scrutiny. Therefore, a company can be transparent and secretive. It can be secretive in relation to its competition and securing its intellectual properties while being transparent to abiding the laws and regulations. Whistleblowing happen when either condition is breached such as being secretive about public scrutiny and non-transparency in actions. Whistleblowing is a result of being non-transparent and too secretive about operations.

No one will blow a whistle on them unless mitigating circumstances arise or someone gets an ethical inspiration to do so. Since the answer is no, whistle blowing on someone else will happen only went the actions have consequences which are harmful to society and community in general. When peoples lives and future are at stake, then only can someone who also does wrong will get to be a whistleblower.