The Moral Compass: Women and Whistleblowing

The Moral Compass: Women and Whistleblowing

Introduction

In the year of 2016, it is safe to say that women’s role in the workplace has come a long way from strictly sitting behind the front desk and answering phone calls from nine until five each day. Today we live in a society in which women are finally welcomed into major corporations and given the same employment opportunities as their male counterparts. However, we all know that no matter how sound a situation may appear on paper, it might not play out as nicely in reality and unfortunately that is exactly what is currently taking place in the American workplace.

Workplace Conflict

We often hear of major gender conflicts and scandals within companies on the news and on the internet. One day you might hear about a major sexual harassment scandal taking place within a particular company, and the next day you are likely to see disappointing statistics on gender biased wage discrepancies within a different company- both of which suggests a still present divide in gender roles within the workforce. So, in a world where women have come so far in the work place but have yet to achieve actual equality, how do women know when to stand up against their employers or coworkers and declare when they have had enough? More importantly, how does a woman’s decision to blow the whistle typically compare to that of their male counterparts- are whistleblowing and retaliation issues of gender division?

Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing is “the disclosure by employees of unethical, illegitimate, or illegal practices by an organization” (Daft & Lane, 2014: 730) as defined by the twelfth edition of Management. Some sources (Lambsdorff & Frank, 2011, Scott-Hunt & Lim, 2005) believe that the issues of: who, what, when, and why, pertaining to whistle blowing decisions are dependent on gender roles. These articles suggest not only that women are more likely to whistle blow than men, but also that a major portion of the reasoning behind that logic is because, statistically, women feel more at risk and less secure in the workplace than their male counterparts do. Therefore they are less willing to risk bargaining or making deals and instead often jump straight to whistle blowing in order to prevent conflict (Lambsdorff & Frank, 2011).

Cases of Interest

Susan Scott-Hunt and Hilary Lim use documentation and evaluation of specific examples of women whistleblowing such as the Enron and World.com scandals in order to take the matter a step further and suggest that there is a major binary divide between men and woman concerning whistleblowing and ethical decision