Editorial

Readers of this special issue may wish to know some of the background to its publication. In June 2009 a conference was held at Middlesex University in London to mark the fact that whistleblowing legislation had been in force in the UK for a decade. This event included a public lecture and attracted delegates from a range of backgrounds, including academics, legal and management practitioners, trade unionists, whistleblowers and students. At the end of the conference the decision to establish an International Whistleblowing Research Network was taken. People can join this network simply by consenting to their email address being used for distribution purposes. At the time of writing, October 2013,there are over 100 names listed. The current convenor of the network is David Lewis, who can be contacted via [email protected]

Developments in Whistleblowing Research 2015

Those interested in this Ebook may like to know some of the background to its publication. In June 2009 a conference was held at Middlesex University to mark the fact that whistleblowing legislation had been in force in the UK for a decade. This event included a public lecture and attracted delegates from a range of backgrounds, including academics, legal and management practitioners, trade unionists, whistleblowers and students. At the end of the conference the decision to establish an International Whistleblowing Research Network (IWRN) was taken. People can join this network simply by consenting to their email address being put on a list and used for distribution purposes. At the time of writing, October 2015, there are over 150 members of the network. The current convenor of the network is David Lewis who can be contacted via [email protected]. Another outcome of this conference was the preparation of an edited book based on the papers presented. This was published by Edward Elgar in 2010 under the title “A global approach to public interest disclosure: what can we learn from existing whistleblowing legislation and research?” Following the IWRN London conferences in 2011 and 2013, an Ebook (entitled “Whistleblowing and Democratic Values”) and a special issue of the E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies were produced respectively. Thus this Ebook, which uses material presented at the June 2015 IWRN conference held in Sarajevo, maintains the network’s tradition of disseminating research papers. Of course, there are other important publications on the subject and the reader’s attention is drawn in particular to the “International Whistleblowing Research Handbook” published by Edward Elgar in 2014

Selected papers from the International Whistleblowing Research Network conference Oslo June 2017

n June 2009 a conference was held at Middlesex University to mark the fact that whistleblowing legislation had been in force in the UK for a decade. This event included a public lecture and attracted delegates from a range of backgrounds, including academics, legal and management practitioners, trade unionists, whistleblowers and students. At the end of the conference the decision to establish an International Whistleblowing Research Network (IWRN) was taken. People can join this network simply by consenting to their email address being put on a list and used for distribution purposes. At the time of writing, October 2017, there are over 200 members of the network. The current convener of the network is David Lewis who can be contacted via [email protected]. Following the IWRN conferences in 2011, 2013 and 2015 two Ebooks ‘Whistleblowing and Democratic Values’ and ‘Developments in whistleblowing research 2015’ and a special issue of the E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies were produced. Thus this Ebook, which uses material presented at the June 2017 IWRN conference held in Oslo, maintains the network’s tradition of disseminating papers relevant to research in the field

The content of whistleblowing procedures: a critical review of recent official guidelines

There is an increasing recognition of the need to provide ways for people to raise concerns about suspected wrongdoing by promoting internal policies and procedures which offer proper safeguards to actual and potential whistleblowers. Many organisations in both the public and private sectors now have such measures and these display a wide variety of operating modalities: in-house or outsourced, anonymous/confidential/identified, multi or single tiered, specified or open subject matter, etc. As a result of this development, a number of guidelines and policy documents have been produced by authoritative bodies. This article reviews the following five documents from a management perspective, the first two deal with the principles upon which legislation might be based and the others describing good management practice: the Council of Europe Resolution 1729 (COER); Transparency International ‘Recommended Principles for Whistleblowing Legislation’ (TI); European Union Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Opinion (EUWP); International Chamber of Commerce ‘Guidelines on Whistleblowing’ (ICC); and the British Standards Institute ‘Whistleblowing arrangements Code of Practice 2008 (BSI)

Trade unions and the whistleblowing process in the UK: An opportunity for strategic expansion?

Historically, whistleblowing research has predominantly focused on psychological and organisational conditions of raising concerns about alleged wrongdoing. Today, however, policy makers increasingly start to look at institutional frameworks for protecting whistleblowers and responding to their concerns. This article focuses on the latter by exploring the roles that trade unions might adopt in order to improve responsiveness in the whistleblowing process. Research has consistently demonstrated that the two main reasons that deter people from reporting perceived wrongdoing are fear of retaliation and a belief that the wrongdoing is unlikely to be rectified. In this article, we argue that trade unions have an important part to play in dealing with both these inhibiting factors but this requires them to be appropriately engaged in the whistleblowing process and willing to take a more proactive approach to negotiations. We use Vandekerckhove’s 3-tiered whistleblowing model and Kaine’s model of union voice level to structure our speculative analysis of the various ways in which trade unions can interact with whistleblowers and organisations they raise concerns about alleged wrongdoing in, as well as agents at a regulatory level. Our articulation of specific roles trade unions can play in the whistleblowing process uses examples from the UK as to how these trade union roles are currently linked to and embedded in employment law and whistleblowing regulation

Managing unethical behavior in organizations: The need for a behavioral business ethics approach

Issues of morality and ethics have increasingly become more important in organizations and business settings. Traditionally, these issues of ethics and social responsibility in business settings have been discussed and commented on by prescriptive approaches that are grounded in philosophical traditions. Building on the idea that we need to develop a more comprehensive and complete understanding of the value that people assign to ethics and how it influences their actions and decisions, in the present article we discuss and review the importance and relevance of adopting also a descriptive approach that is grounded in the behavioral sciences (referred to as behavioral business ethics). This approach has the advantages to promote our insights into how people can show both good and bad behavior and why this is the case. Behavioral business ethics therefore represents an important research challenge for organizational researchers to pursue and engage more meaningfully with more prescriptive approaches