Private Support, Public Alienation: Whistle-Blowers and the Paradox of Social Support

External Whistleblowers’ Experiences of Workplace Bullying by Superiors and Colleagues

“…In this study, we define workplace bullying after external whistleblowing as consisting of recurrent negative acts in relation to work, personal identity, and social relations where the whistleblower feels unable to defend him or herself. Studies of workplace bullying have identified various forms of bullying, such as direct verbal abuse, physical intimidation, and death threats as well as indirect aggression such as slander, gossiping, or spreading unfounded rumors (McGlynn and Richardson 2014;Nolfe et al 2010;Einarsen et al 2009;Saunders et al 2007;Niedhammer et al 2006;Matthiesen and Einarsen 2004). The harmful effects may be deep-seated emotional and psychological distress, mental disorders, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress, as well as low productivity, job dissatisfaction, and thoughts of job exit.…”

Whistleblowing in the Fortune 1000: What practitioners told us about wrongdoing in corporations in a pilot study

“…Whistleblowing is important to society as a mode of "ethical resistance" (Glazer & Glazer, 1989, p. 11), to organizations as a method of communication (Richardson & McGlynn, 2007), to business as a means of informing management of operational problems (McGlynn & Richardson, 2014), to journalists as anonymous sources (Shepard, 2011), and to public relations, in part, as a means of dissent by practitioners (Berger & Reber, 2006). This exporatory pilot study suggests that whistleblowing also is important to public relations as a boundary spanning function (White & Dozier, 1992), as a form of internal communication mandated in publicly traded corporations ("Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,"), as a precipitating event for crisis management by organizations (Bush, 2011;Coombs, 2012), and as an aspect of ethical public relations practice (Bowen, Heath, & Lee, 2006).…”

“…Communication scholars have studied whistleblowing from the standpoint of upward communication (King, 1997), organizational climate (Keenan, 1988), interpersonal closeness (King, 1997), interpersonal influence (Henningsen, Valde, & Denbow, 2013), feminism (Simon, 2013), intent to blow the whistle (Richardson, Wang, & Hall, 2012), alternatives to whistleblowing (Teo & Caspersz, 2011), organizational structure (Richardson, 2005), public versus private support (McGlynn & Richardson, 2014), and image repair (King, 2006), to name a few.…”

Ethical Ideologies, Personality Traits, and Whistleblowing Intention in Public Sector: Mediating Role of Whistleblowing Judgment

“…At some point, many of us are likely to observe unlawful activity in our organisations, and some of us may whistleblow to someone with an authority to put a stop to the illegal behaviour (Near & Miceli, 2016). According to Greenwood (2015), whistleblowing is crucial to the public as a mode of ethical resistance (M. P. Glazer & P. M. Glazer, 1989), to organisations as a method of communication (Scott, Haseki, & Kang, 2017), to businesses as a way of notifying management of operational issues (McGlynn III & Richardson, 2014;Anderson, 2016), to journalists as anonymous sources (Müller & Drax, 2014), and to public relations, to a certain extent, as a way of dissent by practitioners (Berger & Reber, 2006). Detert and Burris (2016) found that organisations see improvements in staffs retention and stronger performance when employees are able to voice their concerns freely.…”