Whistle-Blowers

How Much We Can Learn From Them Depends on How Much We Can Give Up

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3757844
AutoresC F Alford (0000-0002-9948-2454, University of Maryland, College Park, autor correspondente)
Ano1999
Volume43
Fascículo2
Páginas264-277
Data de publicação1999-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00027649921955254
OpenAlexW2156649712
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas9

Based on intensive interviews with several dozen whistle-blowers, this article asks what they have to teach about the organizations in which they worked. The most important thing they have to teach is that organizations are deeply threatened by what Kant called ethical autonomy (Mündigkeit). Organizational life is dedicated to the destruction of ethical autonomy for much the same reason that Freud saw social life as dedicated to the suppression of sex and aggression. Ethical autonomy threatens to explode the organization. This may not in fact be the case, but most organizations act as if they believe it. The purpose of sacrificing the whistle-blower is to prevent the outbreak of an epidemic of ethical and moral responsibility that threatens to engulf the organization in a competitive world

Aggression · Autonomy · Criminology · Dozen · Environmental ethics · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Ethics in Business and Education · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology