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Whistleblowing Case

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The Whistleblowing Case Studies
There are various cases about whistleblowing, one of them is the case of Motorola CFO, Paul Liska.1 He has been fired after giving a presentation. In the presentation, Liska pointed out to Motorola directors that the cell phone unit, Mobile Devices, missed its sales projection for the preceding three months. Liska intended to attack Sanjay Jha, the head of Motorola’s cell phone division, by doing the presentation at the board meeting. The whistleblowing occurred because Liska and Jha did not get along well, and Liska tried to save the situation with an attack on Jha. Liska objected to Jha’s hiring, his compensation package and the co-CEO agreement. Liska’s behavior markedly deteriorated after Jha’s hiring, implying that he was unhappy to be outranked by the new co-CEO. The reason behind Liska’s inflammatory presentation is a matter of contention. Liska says he was trying to fulfill his duty to the company by raising a red flag about the cellphone unit’s projections. Motorola says Liska knew he was on his way out, and he tried to extort the company by setting himself up as a whistle-blower who was being fired for speaking out.
Another famous whistleblowing case is the case of WikiLeaks.2 WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organization which aims to publish online submissions of classified information, news leaks 3 from anonymous news sources and whistleblowers.4 It unleashed the wrath of the U.S. government and a wave of recrimination and reprisals against WikiLeaks and its key figures. Twitter was the only Internet Company to support WikiLeaks while others cut off essential resources to WikiLeaks’ survival. The goal of WikiLeaks is "to bring important news and information to the public”. People publish original source material alongside the news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. The social media are now used by journalists to access sources, share information, and generally to create and circulate the news. The publication of classified material by WikiLeaks triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the source of the leaks. Internet companies received the “secret orders” and stopped supporting to WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks volunteers altered their lifestyle and fighted for the right to build a model of the free press fit for the digital media age. The WikiLeaks volunteer said that the better democracy would be created when people fight for what they believe in, and press equally hard to build the political and legal frameworks that allow such goals to be achieved.
Ethical Problem with Whistleblowing
The first ethical problem with whistle-blowing relates the issue of loyalty. It is often alleged that, as members of a particular organization, engineers have a special duty of loyalty towards that organization and therefore, having that duty, it would be wrong for them to do anything that might harm the organization, i.e., be against interest. So whistle-blowing could on one way harm the organization especially when the company’s top management was looking at it. However whether or not it is wrong to do so is more related to the interest of the company not only the manager. For example, it would be disloyal of an engineer to reveal the secrets of his organization to an outsider, even secrets about unsafe features of products. However, it could be right for engineers to reveal the dark side of the company in order to get an intervention from the governing body and for the good of the company in the long run.
Another ethical problem with whistle-blowing relates the issue of professionalism. As an engineer it is generally felt that there is something honorable about being a member of it. So engineers are considered to have special duties and responsibilities towards society over and above those of ordinary people. So when people are considering whether or not to whistle-blowing, he has to take his social responsibilities into account. In our Motorola case Mr. Liska was fired due to his criticism to another powerful company administrative member. In my opinion, this is not just a personality clash and more of different views towards the development of the company in the future. He could just keep quiet but his professionalism made him to do the other way round.
Circumstances of When Whistleblowing Is Ethically Justifiable
When we talk about whistleblowing and loyalty to a firm, we need to ask a number of questions: Do engineers have a duty of loyalty to their organizations? If so, engineers have a duty to act to the best interest of the firm, then is whistleblowing ever ethically justifiable? Always, people treat loyalty as a virtue. We were taught from young to be loyal to our friends, family and our country. However, in the case of loyalty to a firm, it could be a little different. Loyalty to a corporation is more on dedication and devotion to the development of the firm. Based on that, we can say that if the whistle-blowing is for the good cause to the company’s future, we may not say it is ethically wrong or the person is not loyal. For example, if your boss ask you to ignore some flaws or wrongdoings in a company project, you know the severe consequences for not solving those problems, then it is your duty to whistle-blowing, because you are responsible to the company’s future and the society, you are loyal to the objective of the company not to a wrongdoing person. Another thing about ethically justifiable whistle-blowing is safety. We need to admit that safety is an incontrovertible good if we have a good definition of it. As safety is valued by most of us, when there are unsafe circumstances in a company whistle-blowing is ethically justifiable as safety is treated as a basic principle beyond other things.
Engineering Ethics Lessons Learnt
Based on the Motorola case study, it can be seen that the CFO was fired because of his action to report some mistakes in the company’s annual financial report from the mobile division. The mistake might make the company lost a huge amount of money to a certain group of people. That was an act that leads to corruption. Corruption is regulated by engineering ethics code and it is forbidden. Apart from the corruption, another engineering ethics that can be learned from the case is the loyalty. Based on the Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics point 3. (7), a professional engineer shall not disclose confidential information of his client/employer without agreement from his/her employer. Motorola might see that the CFO to have breached this area of engineering ethics and hence decided to fire him because of his lack of loyalty.
Protections for Whistleblower
Whistle blowing is still a very sensitive and controversial issue in the current world situation. If it is not done properly, it can be very risky and the whistleblower might face disadvantage circumstances regarding his/her decision to stand up and whistle blow. There are many possibilities that can happen to a whistleblower, such as firing by his/her current employer, like the Motorola case that we have already explained, blacklisting, reducing pay or hours, or getting sued by former employer and even assassinated threat like the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. To protect the whistleblowers from these circumstances, some protective measures have to be taken to protect his/her safety, especially if they blow the whistle for right reasons which can affect public safety and concerns like corruption or violation of laws.
Legal acts to protect whistle blowers have actually been implemented since 1863 by the United States False Claims Act.5 This act was implemented as a protection against fraud by the US government’s supplier during civil war.6 Whistle blowers were encouraged by this act and they were promised some percentages of the money won by the government for the case and they were protected from any dismissal. Apart from the US False Claims Act, there are various other Acts to provide guidance and protection about whistle blowing activities, which one of them is 7 the new whistle blowing policy proposed by The Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) in its handbook.8 The SRA proposal is intended for the people who violates the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct and report their own or other’s misconduct.9 This proposal allows the whistle-blower to enter a co-operation agreement and have the rights to receive lighter sanctions from the SRA.
Based on the various policies introduced in many countries and organizations, the measures to protect whistle blowers are not only necessary but also critically important. If the whistle blowers are not protected by law, they will not have any incentive to report any misconduct that can happen in their organizations or even in the government. This might be a direct threat to public interest if nobody is willing to take their stand and blow the whistle to stop it.

References 1. Svensson. Peter, ‘Motorola Case: Whistle Blowing or Personality Clash’, Charleston Gazette, (May 2009). 2. Karhula. Pävickki, ‘What is the Effect of WikiLeaks for Freedom of Information?’, ifla.org, (July 2012). 3. Editors. The, ‘WikiLeaks’, The New York Times, (August, 2012). 4. Winseck. Dwayne and McCurdy. Patrick, ‘Twitter-WikiLeaks case a test of press and privacy rights online; Icelandic MP and WikiLeaker Birgitta Jonsdottir's battle with the U.S. government lies at the nexus of security laws, press freedom and the future of democracy’, The Globe and Mail, (May 2012). 5. Sekhar. Savanam Chandra, ‘Whistle Blowing Write It to Right It’, factiva.com, (December 2011). 6. Ibid. 7. Harrison. Richard, ‘Solicitors and Whistle-Blowing’, factiva.com, (November 2011). 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid.

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