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John Watson

MT302 Organizational Behavior

Unit Three: Case Incident 2

Whistle Blowers: Saints or Sinners

6/27/09
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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Works Cited
Judge, Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A. (2007).
Organizational Behavior, Twelfth Edition. Prentice Hall.

Wilde, S. (1983). Miracles. Carson, Ca.: Hay House, Inc.

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Williams, L. (1997 - 2008). National Whistleblowers Center

- Federal Employee Whistleblower Protection. Retrieved June
28, 2009, from http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=840&Itemid=96