UPDATED IN MARCH 2013 to include the historic $104-million Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblower case and more! From the nation’s leading whistleblower attorney, comes the third edition of the first-ever consumer guide to whistleblowing. In The Whistleblower’s Handbook, Stephen Martin Kohn explains nearly all federal and state laws regarding whistleblowing. In the step-by-step bulk of the book, he also presents twenty-one rules for whistleblowers.
This book is an accessible, research-based introduction to behavioral ethics. Often ethics education is incomplete because it ignores how and why people make moral decisions. But using exciting new research from fields such as behavioural psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology, the study of behavioural ethics uncovers the common reasons why good people often screw up. Scientists have long studied the ways human beings make decisions, but only recently have researchers begun to focus specifically on ethical decision making. Unlike philosophy and religion, which aim to tell people how to think and act about various moral issues, behavioral ethics research reveals the factors that influence how people really make moral decisions. Most people get into ethical trouble for doing obviously wrong things. Aristotle cannot help, but learning about behavioral ethics can. By supplementing traditional approaches to teaching ethics with a clear, detailed, research-based introduction to behavioral ethics, beginners can quickly become familiar with the important elements of this new field. This book includes the bonus of being coordinated with Ethics Unwrapped – a free, online, educational resource featuring award-winning videos and teaching materials on a variety of behavioral ethics (and general ethics) topics. This book is a useful supplement for virtually every ethics course, and important in any course where incorporating practical ethics in an engaging manner is paramount. The content applies to every discipline –business ethics, journalism, medicine, legal ethics, and others – because its chief subject is the nature of moral decision making. The book is also highly relevant to practitioners across all sectors.
The longer WorldCom Chief Audit Executive Cynthia Cooper stares at the entries in front of her, the more sinister they seem. But the CFO is badgering her to delay her team's audit of the company's books and directing others to block Cooper's efforts. Still, something in the pit of her stomach tells her to keep digging. Cooper takes readers behind the scenes on a riveting, real-time journey as she and her team work at night and behind closed doors to expose the largest fraud in corporate history. Whom can they trust? Could she lose her job? Should she fear for her physical safety? In Extraordinary Circumstances, she recounts for the first time her journey from her close family upbringing in a small Mississippi town, to working motherhood and corporate success, to the pressures of becoming a whistleblower, to being named one of Time's 2002 Persons of the Year. She also provides a rare insider's glimpse into the spectacular rise and fall of WorldCom, a telecom titan, the darling of Wall Street, and a Cinderella story for Mississippi. With remarkable candor, Cooper discusses her struggle to overcome these challenges, and how she has found healing through sharing the lessons learned with the next generation. This book reminds us all that ethical decision-making is not forged at the crossroads of major events but starts in childhood, "decision by decision and brick by brick." At a time when corporate dishonesty is dominating public attention, Extraordinary Circumstances makes it clear that the tone set at the top is critical to fostering an ethical environment in the work-place. Provocative, moving, and intensely personal, Extraordinary Circumstances is a wake-up call to corporate leaders and an intimate glimpse at a scandal that shook the business world.
The Committee calls for better and more accessible procedures for civil servants to raise concerns about the conduct of government. A route should to be established whereby evidence that a minister had misled Parliament or the public could be reported to Parliament following a complaint by a civil servant. Leaks damage trust within government and trust in government. The Committee concludes that leak investigations are often hamstrung by the fact that many leaks are politically motivated, including leaks from ministers and special advisers. The most effective way to prevent leaks by civil servants is to have accessible, effective and visible ways for individuals to raise concerns about the conduct of government, either internally or through an external oversight body, the Civil Service Commissioners. The report makes the following key recommendations: the Civil Service Commissioners should have the power to report to Parliament evidence indicating that the government was misleading Parliament or the public or the fact that the Civil Service has refused to act on a justified complaint; the Commissioners should also conduct independent investigation of breaches of confidentiality by special advisers; the leaking of information should only be a criminal matter where there is a breach of the Official Secrets Act or there is evidence of serious criminal misconduct; the Cabinet Office, Heads of Departments and the Civil Service Commissioners should do more to ensure that potential whistleblowers know how to raise concerns and have the confidence to come forward with them.
Choose the best speak-up arrangements for your organisation The last five years have seen dramatic and fundamental changes in whistleblower procedures for organisations. Prompted by a spate of important public disclosures, organizations are now mandated by law to implement effective arrangements enabling employees to speak up about perceived wrongdoing. Currently few resources exist to help with this. To help fill the gap, The Whistleblowing Guide examines the opportunities and challenges associated with different types of whistleblowing and speak-up arrangements, making recommendations based on best practices you can trust. Identifies the major organisational, structural and cultural obstacles to speaking up through speak-up arrangements Proposes effective whistleblowing and speak-up arrangements Explains the specific policy and legislation requirements that can promote or impede the effective implementation of speak-up arrangements, and how these can be translated into commercial and public organizations across sectors and cultures Makes a clear distinction between internal and external reporting arrangements The Whistleblowing Guide offers conceptual clarification about these key issues, including a focus on internal and external speak-up procedures, organisational response and communication, impartiality and trust.
øFeaturing contributions from scholars and policy practitioners in a number of diverse fields _ including sociology, political science, psychology, information systems, media studies, business, management, criminology, public policy and several branche
UPDATED EDITION With corruption and fraud endemic in democratic South Africa, whistleblowers have provided an invaluable service to society through disclosures about cover-ups, malfeasance and wrongdoing. Their courageous acts have resulted in the recovery of millions of rands to the fiscus and to their fellow citizens as well as in improved transparency and accountability. But in most cases, the outcomes for the whistleblowers themselves are devastating. Some have been gunned down in orchestrated assassinations, others have been threatened and targeted in sinister dirty-tricks campaigns. Many are hounded out of their jobs, ostracised and victimised. They are pushed to the fringes of society. These are the evocative accounts of South Africa’s whistleblowers, told in their own voices, from across the country. The Whistleblowers also advocates for a change in legislation, organisational support and social attitudes in order to embolden others to have the courage to step up. Photographs by Felix Dlangamandla
This is a research-based book on whistle-blowing in organizations. The three noted authors describe studies on this important topic and the implications of the research and theory for organizational behavior, managerial practice, and public policy. In the past few years there have been critical developments, including corporate scandals, which
