Whistleblower - the Illegal Act Internally or Externally

      CHAPTER II

INTRODUCTION

Every organization set its goals and objectives in order to achieve it, which sometime it may lead to legal/illegal strategies to implement it. Furthermore, ethical/unethical behavior might exist as well. The negative impact from this behavior can affect the employee’s behavior of doing the right thing the right way. The behavior of the wrongdoing in the organization are often equivalent to an act of violation against the company rules, regulations and laws, furthermore, it may reach to affect the national security or even the public interest in the form of corruption. The act of revealing the wrongdoing within the organization known as whistleblowing, and who did the act called whistleblower. Hearing “whistleblower” at first it gives the perspective of alerting others about some hazard that might happens, as what referees on sports use to indicate an illegal behavior or a hazardous act that happens.  

Any whistleblower has an option to inform the illegal act internally or externally. By internally means, the whistleblower is informing within the organization to someone with authority and power to take an action. Whereas, externally is when the whistleblower refers to a third party outside the organization such as; media, government or even a law firm. However, whistleblower take a huge risk after whistleblowing from a revenge from whom who did the illegal act or the wrongdoing, though there are a various laws of whistleblower protection. However, these whistleblowers might face legal actions such as; criminal charges or even a termination from the position or the job simply because they just want to do the right thing. Moreover, this intention to do the right thing has drawn many laws of protection to the whistleblowers specially.  

The act of whistleblowing is something some people consider it as betrayal while others thinks its heroic act. for example, this famous whistleblower case: the leak of classified information on National Security Agency (NSA) global surveillance programs by an American computer professional, Edward Snowden, that shows wrongdoings of America in breaking the law of privacy, has caused the whistleblower to be known as “The Nation’s Traitor but the World’s Hero”.

To give the precise answer about this act the motivation behind the whistleblowing act needs to be examined through the moral, cultural and temperament approaches. The contributory factors on the source issue could arise from individual’s intentions or organizational moral cultures that require any elaborations. A study of perception on source mechanisms by the Institute of Internal Auditors of city proves that the source action depends on the context of the problems. Thus, to obviously state whether or not they square measure a hero or a traitor, completely different cases or situations of whistleblowing square measure studied.