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Society needs whistleblowers, yet to speak up and expose wrongdoing often results in professional and personal ruin. Kate Kenny draws on the stories of whistleblowers to explain why this is, and what must be done to protect those who have the courage to expose the truth. Despite their substantial contribution to society, whistleblowers are considered martyrs more than heroes. When people expose serious wrongdoing in their organizations, they are often punished or ignored. Many end up isolated by colleagues, their professional careers destroyed. The financial industry, rife with scandals, is the focus of Kate Kenny’s penetrating global study. Introducing whistleblowers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Ireland working at companies like Wachovia, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Countrywide–Bank of America, Whistleblowing suggests practices that would make it less perilous to hold the powerful to account and would leave us all better off. Kenny interviewed the men and women who reported unethical and illegal conduct at major corporations in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. Many were compliance officers working in influential organizations that claimed to follow the rules. Using the concept of affective recognition to explain how the norms at work powerfully influence our understandings of right and wrong, she reframes whistleblowing as a collective phenomenon, not just a personal choice but a vital public service.
E-Book Content
Whistleblowing Whistleblowing T O WA R D A N E W T H E O R Y Kate Kenny Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2019 Copyright © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Jacket art: wildpixel/iStock/Getty Images Plus Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth 9780674239722 (EPUB) 9780674239739 (MOBI) 9780674239715 (PDF) The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Kenny, Kate (Kate Marguerite), author. Title: Whistleblowing : toward a new theory / Kate Kenny. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018036018 | ISBN 9780674975798 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Whistle blowing. | Retribution. | Organizational behavior. | Organizational change. Classification: LCC HD60 .K4822 2019 | DDC 174/.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn .loc .gov /2018036018 For my f amily Contents Introduction 1 1 Speaking Out: What We Know 13 2 Whistleblowing: The Subject and Power 32 3 Global Finance: Norms of Complicity 59 4 The Whistleblower as Professional: Subjection to Norms 89 5 Whistleblower Retaliation: Impossible Speech and Violence 104 6 Speaking Out in Public: Toward Possible Speech 117 7 Media, Recruitment, and Friends: Excluding the Public Whistleblower 138 8 Turning Inward: Excluding the Self 160 9 Coping with Retaliation: Affective Recognition 173 10 Small Victories and Making Fun: Performing the Whistleblower 195 Conclusion 209 Appendix: Project Method 217 Notes 227 Bibliography 251 Acknowledgments 273 Index 275 Whistleblowing Introduction A Whistleblowing Fairy Tale Once upon a time, t here lived a person who saw serious wrongdoing in the place she worked. She alerted her boss, who assured her that he would take care of it. He did nothing. She tried to tell his superiors. They did nothing. She found herself sidelined at work, given meaningless tasks to do. Her col leagues shunned her. She felt stressed out and isolated. She was upset because the wrongdoing continued, and it was causing harm to innocent people. Frustrated, she spoke to a journalist who convinced her to go