Organizational Dissent - Whistle-blowing

Whistle-blowing

Whistle-blowing is a subset of dissent. It involves the expression of dissent to external organizations such as media and political avenues that have the power to take corrective action. Kassing (2000) believes that the whistle-blowing process begins at the superior–subordinate relationship. If a superior response to an employee's effort to dissent is negative this may cause the employee to seek other avenues of dissent. In fact, evidence indicates that only as a last resort do the dissendents finally go public with their tales (Bennis, 2004, Kassing, 2000).

Whistle-blowers are often high-performing employees who believe they are doing their job (Martin, 2005). They just want to bring people's attention to a problem that is potentially harmful or unethical. Despite this, whistle-blowers are perceived negatively and suffer grave consequences. They are often ostracized, harassed, and attacked by their superiors and coworkers. They face termination, financial losses, stress, relationship breakdown, and health problems. Even worse, few whistle-blowers seem to bring about any change. The organization seems to put all their efforts into destroying the whistle-blower while ignoring the original problem. The organization will take great measures to cover-up the problem, devalue the target, reinterpret the events, and intimidated and/or bribe the whistle-blowers (Martin, 2005).

Organizations need to realize that internal dissent is not itself a crisis, but rather priceless insurance against disaster. Until the ugly headlines appear and the consequences are unavoidable, companies too often forget that they will suffer far more for ignoring their principled dissendents than by giving them a hearing (Bennis, 2004).