Management Paper - Whistleblowers

Management Final Paper

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/01/28/u-s-takes-whistleblower-case-against-air-marshal-to-supreme-court/

Article 1 by Jacob Gershman

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-07/business/sns-rt-us-jpmorgan-whistleblower-20140307_1_whistleblower-fha-federal-housing-administration

Article 2 by Jonathan Stempel

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/us/sxsw-edward-snowden-speaker/

Article 3 by Josh Rubin

Whistleblower’s and Company Ethics

When we learned about whistleblowing in class I was really struck by the topic. The act of whistleblowing is an ethical dilemma; it is the term applied to the reporting of employees perpetrating illegal, immoral, or illegitimate acts under the control of their employers to parties who can take corrective action. It seems to be quite a controversial issue, though on the positive side employees that decide to whistleblow can help fellow colleagues and organizations fix unsafe products or working conditions and put an end to fraudulent business tactics. However, deciding to whistleblow is very risky as it can put your career in jeopardy while you are attempting to do the morally correct thing; in the long run I believe that such an action is in the best interest of the company. I was able to find three articles that examined various whistleblowing cases.

The first whistleblower that I will discuss is a man by the name of Robert MacLean. This article was written by Jacob Gershman and was featured on the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog on January 28th. Although this event took place in 2006, this is the first instance that I have heard of it. Mr. MacLean was fired from his job for telling a report that air marshals were being pulled from flights. He found out the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was suspending air marshal service on coast-to-coast and international flights for at least a week. This cutback worried him and he subsequently complained to his supervisors about the safety risks that this...