Ethics and whistleblowing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Ethics and whistleblowing - Essay Example Introduction ‘Whistleblowing’ basically refers to make any kind of disclosure in the general interest of public. The term is more commonly referred as ‘blowing the whistle’. If the employee working in any organisation feels that there is wrongdoing in their workplace, then they can report this to the management by following the correct processes. By doing so, their employment rights can be protected. It is worth mentioning that the whistleblowers are shielded for the public interest in order to encourage the people to speak out if they feel that any kind of malpractice is going on in the organisation (DirectGov 2011). The statistics published in public interest reveals that the people’s attitude towards the whistle blowing has improved to a great extent. The survey conducted by ‘Public Concern at Work’ in the year 2007 indicated that 85% of the people informed that they would raise a concern with regards to the malpractices that is taking place with the employers. It was further made evident that 31% of the people would go to the regulatory bodies or to the police if the ‘internal route’ was not considered as the option (Public Concern at Work n.d.). Growing awareness of employee rights, Public Interest Disclosure Act (1998), Health and Safety Executive, PR practices, CSR and Internal Codes of Practices have resulted in improving the condition for whistleblowing. UNISON, a public service union collaborated with Public Concern at Work in order to conduct survey to ask 2000 NHS staffs if whistleblowing was working or not. It was found that around 90% of them had blown the whistle at times when they were concerned about patient safety. 50% were not aware of the fact that their ‘Trust’ had a whistleblowing policy. 33% revealed that their ‘Trust’ wanted to blow the whistle despite being aware of the fact that it would result to bad publicity. 30% revealed that their ‘Trustâ₠¬â„¢ didn’t want them to be told that there was a severe problem while 25% said that the culture was improving (Public Concern at Work n.d.). This statistics can be shown graphically with the help of the chart below: Source: (Public Concern at Work n.d.). Source: (Public Concern at Work n.d.). Other Statistics on Whistleblowing Source: (NWC 2008). The figure that is demonstrated above depicts the companies that report operating a whistleblowing system and the percentage of those companies that consider it to be effective (NWC 2008). It has been found from the report that approximately 5678 cases of whistleblowing were received in the fiscal year 2009, which was up by nearly 2000 over the prior fiscal year (Worldwide ERC 2011). The major aim of this study is to evaluate how the organisations can develop an effective approach to the workplace whistleblowing taking into account the needs of its stakeholders. Research Question The main objective of the research is to evaluate how the organisation can develop an effective approach to workplace whistleblowing that takes into account of the needs of their stakeholders. Therefore, the whole assignment