Part 1
Image of a referee holding up a red cardWhat if you have knowledge of serious wrongdoing and are not in a position to stop it yourself? Whistleblowing potentially involves serious risks to your reputation, career, and financial stability. Before you take this step, you should consider the importance of the issue to you, your intentions, and the risks and benefits of acting or not acting. When planning the action, it is important to review the power structure of the organization, consider timing issues, develop alternatives, and carefully strategize about how you will communicate the issue.
When blowing the whistle, you should try to respect the chain of command. That means starting with your immediate manager and then going to the next level if you are not satisfied with the results. If you still dont get a response, this is the point where you should use the companys internal ethics reporting system, if one exists. Only after these options are exhausted should you consider going outside the chain of command. And it is only when all else fails that you should consider going outside the company.
For your discussion:
Locate an article in the EC Library databases that discusses whistleblowing. Discuss the situation that led to an employee blowing the whistle on the organization. Should employees have freedom of conscience? Why or why not? Considering the long-term effects on employees of blowing the whistle, when should they engage in whistleblowing tactics? Identify some reasons why external whistleblowing occurs in any given situation.
Post your primary response on the discussion board. Be sure to review your writing for grammar and spelling before posting. Read any postings already provided by your instructor or fellow students. See the SBT Discussion Rubric for how you will be evaluated for this activity. You are also expected to read the responses to your original posts, and if a classmate raises a question or an issue that warrants a response, you are expected to respond.
Your responses to the discussion questions should relate the assigned readings and viewings to the discussion topic and should not consist only of personal opinion. Your opinion is important to the discussion, but you should add connections to the material to support your views. Without a foundation in the literature, your opinion has little professional value. For example, \”Based on Trevino and Nelson\’s stance that cultural relativism creates an environment where unethical behavior is justified through the cultural discourse (year, P#), the discussion should center around…\”. This type of statement allows you to connect your views to the literature. This is possible even when you are providing personal examples.
Use the subject line as an advanced organizer to allow your classmates and the instructor to have some idea of what your posting is about. For example, a subject line, response to discussion question, is not appropriate. Your responses to fellow students should contain substance, should be more than just opinion, and must go beyond a simple agreement or disagreement.
Compose your work using a word processor and save it, as a Plain Text or an .rtf, to your computer. When you\’re ready to make your initial posting, please click on the Create Thread button and copy/paste the text from your document into the message field. Be sure to check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors before you post it.
Review the SBT Discussion Rubric located in the \”Start Here\” section of the course for more information on grading criteria.
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Part 2: Conflicts of Interest
Image of a rubber band holding the ends of a chain together Conflicts of interest arise in all organizations. This module shows that no organization, whether public or private, is exempt from issues related to conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest result in being pulled in two different directions. Good people can make bad decisions that result in bad actions, especially when a conflict of interest exists. Our own sense of self-interest can negatively affect ethical decision making. As explored by Gunia et al. (2012), self-interested conversation leads to less ethical decisions, while contemplation and moral conversation lead to more ethical decisions.
For your discussion:
We all have faced conflicts of interest within our workplace. Often, these conflicts are not even consciously considered or evaluated as part of our decision-making process. Identify problems that you, as an employee, must deal with on a daily basis. Consider possible conflicts of interest you or others in your workplace must face. How does this affect decision making? Are these types of conflicts of interest avoidable? If so, how? If not, what can be done to minimize the possible unethical impact?
Post your primary response on the discussion board. Be sure to review your writing for grammar and spelling before posting. Read any postings already provided by your instructor or fellow students. See the SBT Discussion Rubric for how you will be evaluated for this activity. You are also expected to read the responses to your original posts, and if a classmate raises a question or an issue that warrants a response, you are expected to respond.
Your responses to the discussion questions should relate the assigned readings and viewings to the discussion topic and should not consist only of personal opinion. Your opinion is important to the discussion, but you should add connections to the material to support your views. Without a foundation in the literature, your opinion has little professional value. For example, \”Based on Trevino and Nelson\’s stance that cultural relativism creates an environment where unethical behavior is justified through the cultural discourse (year, P#), the discussion should center around…\”. This type of statement allows you to connect your views to the literature. This is possible even when you are providing personal examples.
Use the subject line as an advanced organizer to allow your classmates and the instructor to have some idea of what your posting is about. For example, a subject line, response to discussion question, is not appropriate. Your responses to fellow students should contain substance, should be more than just opinion, and must go beyond a simple agreement or disagreement.
Compose your work using a word processor and save it, as a Plain Text or an .rtf, to your computer. When you\’re ready to make your initial posting, please click on the Create Thread button and copy/paste the text from your document into the message field. Be sure to check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors before you post it.
Review the SBT Discussion Rubric located in the \”Start Here\” section of the course for more information on grading criteria.
