Reframing the whistleblower in research: Truth‐tellers as whistleblowers in changing cultural contexts

Abstract

Whistleblowing is fraught with conceptual dilemmas, including those who may be considered whistleblowers and fundamental concepts associated with the term. Whistleblowing is a dynamic concept, set within and deeply related to culture, yet scholarship has focused primarily on whistleblowing and its ramifications within management and organizational settings, as opposed to engaging with the wrong‐doing disclosed and conceptualizing how we assign meaning to whistleblowers/ing in changing landscapes of societal values and cultural institutions. To grasp the cultural sociological understanding of what constitutes whistleblowing, these themes and how they are shaped need to be drawn out in scholarship. Thus, the purpose of this review is to determine through which disciplines, lenses and discourse whistleblowing has been developed in academia and to identify gaps in disciplines and methods, highlighting how these affect our broader understanding of whistleblowing. This review article offers preliminary insight into how people engage in meaning‐making connected with terms such as whistleblowing, abuse and corruption through the lens of the #MeToo movement. The article encourages further research in disciplines such as sociology, political theory, human rights, socio‐legal studies and particularly, within cultural sociology.

Whistleblower Memoirs: Deconstructing Data Consultants’ Insider Stories

“…In the area of business ethics, whistleblowing is defined by Jubb (1999) as a “deliberate non-obligatory act of disclosure, which gets onto public record and is made by a person who has or had privileged access to data or information of an organization, about non-trivial illegality or other wrongdoings” (p. 78). This general definition applies to data whistleblowers too, yet upon closer inspection the denunciation of practices as being unethical or criminal as well as the authority and responsibility of those exposing allegedly nontrivial wrongdoings remains contested (Bushnell, 2020). Far from only being a conceptual puzzle, the definition of what constitutes whistleblowing is an enduring provocation beholden to unreconcilable value judgments and controversial legal and moral political convictions.…”

“…It is not just that they might have a tangle of motives—some more altruistic, some more malicious—but also that perceptions of the public interest are, as Gurman and Mistry (2020) have noted, “inherently subjective, politically contested, and historically constructed” (p. 31). When scrutinized, the noble creeds fall apart, yet they are nevertheless helpful in highlighting issues of recognition and legitimacy (Bushnell, 2020). Moreover, they draw our attention to the enactment of the truth-speaker image and thus to the agency of those trying to manage their public appearance.…”

Feminist social movements and whistleblowing disclosures: Ireland's Women of Honour

“…(D) Solidarity between whistleblowers, and whistleblower collectives, has received relatively scant attention in that literature, albeit that some studies draw attention to this aspect as holding the potential for more effective disclosures (e.g., author/s; Bushnell, 2020;Kenny & Fotaki, 2021;Munro, 2017). But again, insights from feminist solidarity literature illuminate.…”

Women Whistleblowers: Examining parrhesia, power and gender with Sophocles’ Antigone

“…Gender can affect perceptions; women whistleblowers are more likely to be seen as passive participants than assertive protagonists, even in whistleblowing struggles in which they hold active leadership positions (Avila, Harrison, & Richter, 2018). Women's whistleblowing has traditionally been taken less seriously in cases of sexual harassment and assault, giving rise to movements including #MeToo and Time's Up (Bushnell, 2020;Hickerson, 2018;Morais dos Santos Bruss, 2019).…”