‘Should I Tell?’ Moral Reflexivity in 14 Whistleblower Autobiographies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21464321 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas Olesen (0000-0002-2742-5100, Aarhus University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 199 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 55-70 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Business Ethics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0167-4544 • E-ISSN: 1573-0697 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10551-024-05852-3 |
| OpenAlex | W4404528245 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
Who is the whistleblower, and how do they reach the difficult decision to blow the whistle? The article argues that the extant literature has not paid sufficient attention to the profound moral reflexivity in this transition from employee to whistleblower. What is missing, in particular, is a better, sociologically informed, understanding of the various social domains in which whistleblowers are embedded. These domains are important because they provide different kinds of resources for the whistleblower’s moral reflexivity. To pursue this idea, the article conducts a qualitative analysis of 14 whistleblower autobiographies. The analysis is structured around four social domains, which are prevalent in the material: Childhood and adolescence, professional ethics, organizational loyalty, and societal and civic duty values. The autobiographical data clearly demonstrate how whistleblowers actively draw on these domains, and often several of them, as they justify and give meaning to their actions. Such a multidimensional understanding of the whistleblower’s social embeddedness opens up to new ways of analysing the deep personal and moral challenges that most whistleblowers experience
Business ethics · Political science · Public health · Quality of Life Research · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Ethics in Business and Education · Law · Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Whistleblowing in Organizations
Organizational dissidence
Whistleblowing
Ethics as Critical Practice
Potential Predictors of Whistle-Blowing
Responding to Organizational Identity Threats
Dissolving the Moral Dilemma of Whistleblowing
Professional Ethics and Civic Morals
The Logic of Practice
Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and A ‘Successfully’ Balanced Femininity in Celebrity CEO Autobiographies
Predictors of Whistle-Blowing Intentions
Censored
Predicting employee reactions to perceived organizational wrongdoing
The power of moral concerns in predicting whistleblowing decisions
The whistleblower's dilemma and the fairness–loyalty tradeoff
The social construction of reality
Whistleblowers
Whistle-Blower Disclosures and Management Retaliation
Writing Class In and Out
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |