Whistle Blowers: Saints or Sinners

1. Do you believe that whistle-blowing is good for organizations and its members, or is
it, as David Stetler believes, often a means to extort financial gains from companies?

Is having strong ethics whether they are ethical or

unethical practices makes it easier for a person to take
action than for that person to process the making of
decisions and choices for today's ethically working
environment?

In this week's case "whistle blowing" is a new topic and

issue for me in which I only heard of a few months ago. I
heard of it through a discussion board from a previous
class in which students were trying to prevent employees
from revealing confidentiality and security from an
organization to others who were not suppose to have this
information. "Whistle blowing" was one of the solutions to
preventing this act.

I feel that in this case of Douglas Duran former VP of

sales for TAP, it was his good ethics and intuition to
correct the wrongdoing of the organization while using the
precise process of decision-making and chose to go through
the court system to punish the company for what they may
have been doing towards the insurance company.

My reasoning is that Duran is innocent from unethical

practices from extorting financial gains from TAP.
According to Senator Charles Grassley, "having informants
report on company wrongdoings is the best way to prevent
illegal activity. There can never be enough bureaucrats to
discourage fraudulent use of taxpayer's money but knowing
colleagues might squeal can be deterrent" (Judge, 2007)
p.179.

The reason was for his innocence is there were 500 boxes
of evidence and the case settled. In addition, it cost TAP
over 1 billion dollars of legal fees to clear them of all
wrongdoing. David Stetler's, job as a defense attorney is
to defend whether the defendant is right or wrong.

In this case, it clearly shows by its lesson that

"whistle blowing" is good for an organization and those who
are unethical to "whistle blow" to extort money are most
likely behaving with the same attitude as organizations who
commit unethical practices or crime.

2. How might self-fulfilling prophecy affect a whistle-blower’s search for incriminating

evidence against a company?

In the book Miracles it states, "That the Universal Law

is impartial and unemotional. It has no way of knowing what
you want, or does it discriminate between your hopes and
aspirations, likes and dislikes - it is pure energy. It
accepts whatever thoughts, feelings, and actions you
project and reflects them back to you unemotionally in the
form of events that you experience day to day" (Wilde,
1983) p.2.

To make a long definition short, a self-fulfilling

prophecy is simply an idea someone gets into his or her
head and subconsciously makes it a reality. A "whistle-
blower" has the intention to find incriminating evidence,
so even if the company is innocent, the whistle-blower may
make false assumptions, even subconsciously, in order to
incriminate the company, thus creating a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

3. When frivolous lawsuits occur, how might these cases affect future whistle-blowers
who have a valid legal claim against their company? Would they be more or less likely
to come forward? How might their claims be evaluated? What should companies and
the government do to prevent frivolous lawsuits?

When frivolous lawsuits occur, it affects future "whistle

blowers" by having them perceive the process of reporting
their grievances by being discouraged in investing the time
and effort to follow through with their claims because they
may feel it might be a waste of time and they may not be
took seriously.

Because of this dilemma, if a person had a legal claim

and lack the three components model of creativity as well
as have biases, errors, and preconceived notions in their
own mind while lacking the process of decision-making and
problem solving, they would less likely to come forward to
make a claim against an organization (Judge, 2007).

In this case, if employees provided strong evidence, have

an open and shut case against a company and they had good
ethics, authorities would evaluate their claim. On the
other hand, if they were an unethical person by providing a
weak case, authorities may not evaluate their claim.

For companies to prevent frivolous law suits there is

only one solution, don't do any wrong doing and create
stricter guidelines toward making claims against a company.
The government on the other hand should make stricter laws
by taking away the reward of paying a "whistle blower" 30
percent of legal fees and by not providing them protection
of reporting a wrongdoing unless a person can prove a
company guilty. I guess what I am trying to say is a
company and the government must really screen a person to
find out if they are making a frivolous lawsuit.

4. Do you believe that employees of a company have an ethical obligation to first attempt
to report wrong-doing to members of the company itself, or should they go straight to the
authorities when they suspect illegal activity? What are some advantages and
disadvantages of both actions?.

This is a very tender and touchy question to answer

because companies and most organizations are set up upon
ranks of hierocracy and an organizational tree system.

Therefore, reporting wrongdoing to members of a company

first or authorities really depend on where in a company
the wrongdoing is taking place. My opinion would be that if
it is a large company and the wrongdoing is taking place on
the lower end of the company I would most likely report it
to member who are higher up in the company. If the
wrongdoing does not stop or the company from the top is
committing the wrongdoing, I will first proceed to report
it to the authorities.

The advantages of reporting illegal activity to a company

first is that it allows a company the chance to correct
their wrongdoings. However, the disadvantages could be
harmful. An employee could lose their job, when reported
they could go through many red tape, receive manipulation
politically, and even die.

Reporting illegal activity to authorities first has

advantages like the "NWC" National Whistle Blower Center
who broadcast the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act
of 2009 on their website of what their protection should
be(Williams, 1997 - 2008).

The advantages are to relieve fear and retaliations that

may occur which are amoungst the disadvantages. Other
advantage if it is authenthic honest and truthful is that
reporting wrongdoings of a company the whistleblower
recieves percentages of the legal fees incurred which could
results in the millions of dollars.

Lastly I would like to add to an disadvantage of

reporting illegal activity. Besides from experiecining the
process of a lawsuit and trial if a person is found to have
claimed a friviluos lawsuit that would tarnish their
reputation as an ethical person and prevent them from
getting a job in the future.