The battle for the whistleblower : an interview with John Kiriakou

Whistleblowing, or speaking truth to power, is complex. How truth telling is shaped is an important issue, as is the legitimacy of the individual who speaks out. Both the person who blows the whistle, and the disclosure itself, may be framed differently depending upon the agendas of others. This is further shaped and complicated by the various mediums through which disclosures are made. In what follows we present an interview with CIA whistleblower, John Kiriakou, and discuss its implications for theories of whistleblowing including those drawing on the concept of parrhesia. This case demonstrates the complexities involved in establishing a voice and gaining legitimacy amid contemporary forms of media, alongside the effects of this for the whistleblower

Whistleblowing and power: a network perspective

This article presents a network perspective on whistleblowing. It considers how whistleblowing affects, and is affected by, the preexisting distribution of power inside and outside an organization, where power is conceptualized as deriving from the network positions of the key actors. The article also highlights four characteristic features of whistleblowing: third‐party detriment, local subversion, appeal to central or external power, and reasonable expectation of concern. The feature of local subversion succinctly explains why whistleblowing is difficult. The feature of appeal to central or external power highlights that contrary to the perception of a democratizing phenomenon, whistleblowing tends to redistribute discretion away from local power toward more central power. This suggests a need for caution about institutional measures to promote whistleblowing in contexts where governance is already highly centralized

Criminal intent or cognitive dissonance: how does student self plagiarism fit into academic integrity?

The discourse of plagiarism is speckled with punitive terms not out of place in a police officer's notes: detection, prevention, misconduct, rules, regulations, conventions, transgression, consequences, deter, trap, etc. This crime and punishment paradigm tends to be the norm in academic settings. The learning and teaching paradigm assumes that students are not filled with criminal intent, but rather are confused by the novel academic culture and its values. The discourse of learning and teaching includes: development, guidance, acknowledge, scholarly practice, communicate, familiarity, culture. Depending on the paradigm adopted, universities, teachers, and students will either focus on policies, punishments, and ways to cheat the system or on program design, assessments, and assimilating the values of academia. Self plagiarism is a pivotal issue that polarises these two paradigms. Viewed from a crime and punishment paradigm, self plagiarism is an intentional act of evading the required workload for a course by re-using previous work. Within a learning and teaching paradigm, self plagiarism is an oxymoron. We would like to explore the differences between these two paradigms by using self plagiarism as a focal point

Whistleblower or Troublemaker? How One Man Took on the Soviet Mafia

The paper tells the story of a pensioner’s fight against a local mafia of Soviet party and government officials and farm managers in a remote rural locality in the 1950s. To Moscow, he was a whistleblower. To the leaders of his local community, he was a troublemaker. Working together, the local people went to extraordinary lengths to suppress his criticisms. Eventually, Moscow intervened to vindicate him. The story illustrates vividly the political and economic issues that arose when a centralized dictatorship that relied on mass mobilization over a vast territory with sometimes poor communications tried to contain local rent seeking while moving away from mass terror as its chief instrument of control.Corruption ; Mafia ; Soviet Economy ; Whistleblowing.

First step developing a early-warning system against corruption for sports associations

The business model of sports is based on trust, reputation and fairness. In recent years sports associations have often engaged in crime, corruption and non-compliance, which has damaged the reputation of sports. A professional compliance tool to counteract the loss of trust is still missing, an early-warning system for sports organisations could provide a solution. It simulates how they react to non-tolerable instances of corruption, doping or violations of competitive integrity. The aim of this article is to present the first step developing an early-warning system for sports associations. The approach of New Institutional Economics was chosen to be the theoretical framework to understand the characteristics of corrupt deals and from that identify indicators that uncover corruption at an early stage. To support the normative process of indicator finding a literature research and a case study were carried out. The results indicate that corrupt deals involve three phases and that the relationship between the corrupt partners is central. Regarding to the strong bonds in corrupt relationships a lack of term limitations, no rotation in leadership positions, missing systems of whistleblowing or insufficient transparency could be possible indicators for corruption and non-compliance in sports associations

Revisiting Corruption Control Strategies: Review and Implications for Anti-Corruption Design Policy

This study provides a desk-research overview of the corruption control strategies, especially on the implementation of rewards and incentive, monitoring, whistleblowing system, anti-corruption agencies and punishment. This study, in essence, use desk-research approach, with reliance on the secondary source of data, notably articles in published journals. This study finds that rigorous empirical evaluation of corruption control strategies is scarce yet promising. From the review, this article implies that corruption is indeed a multifaceted problem, therefore relying on a particular strategy might not be sufficient to curb corrupt acts. The implication for the design of anti-corruption policy is discussed. Keywords: corruption; anti-corruption; corruption control strategy

Whistleblowing Behavior in Organizations

We develop a game theoretical model of whistleblowing behavior in organizations, focusing speci�fically on the role of incentives aimed at encouraging this type of behavior. We also analyze the potential impacts of whistleblowing behavior on the persistence of corruption. First, we present a static game consisting of two employees with three available strategies: honest, corrupt and whistleblowing behavior. Later, we examine the pure and mixed Nash equilibrium strategies of the game. Second, we use the concept of replicator dynamics to formally explore the local asymptotic stability of whistleblowing behavior within organizations. Our main results show that whistleblowing as a mechanism to control wrongdoing is only relevant under the existence of external monitoring (if the probability of detecting wrongdoing with an external mechanism is close to zero, then in the long term, all employees will begin to behave corruptly). We also show that whistleblowers reduce the minimum wages required to avoid corruption within an organization, making it less costly for an organization to combat corruption. Finally, we claim that whistleblowing strategies seem to be less attractive for activities with very high bribery in comparison to the rewards for whistleblowers, for example, this could be the case of manufacturing or retail, but not for �nancial services in general

Whistleblowing Behavior in Organizations

We develop a game theoretical model of whistleblowing behavior in organizations, focusing speci�fically on the role of incentives aimed at encouraging this type of behavior. We also analyze the potential impacts of whistleblowing behavior on the persistence of corruption. First, we present a static game consisting of two employees with three available strategies: honest, corrupt and whistleblowing behavior. Later, we examine the pure and mixed Nash equilibrium strategies of the game. Second, we use the concept of replicator dynamics to formally explore the local asymptotic stability of whistleblowing behavior within organizations. Our main results show that whistleblowing as a mechanism to control wrongdoing is only relevant under the existence of external monitoring (if the probability of detecting wrongdoing with an external mechanism is close to zero, then in the long term, all employees will begin to behave corruptly). We also show that whistleblowers reduce the minimum wages required to avoid corruption within an organization, making it less costly for an organization to combat corruption. Finally, we claim that whistleblowing strategies seem to be less attractive for activities with very high bribery in comparison to the rewards for whistleblowers, for example, this could be the case of manufacturing or retail, but not for �nancial services in general