What Motivates a Whistleblower?

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Other

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Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.9 OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES

Publication Details

RTE Brainstorm, Updated / Friday, 26 Mar 2021 14:45

Abstract

The reporting of wrongdoing in an organisation to someone who can do something about it is increasingly prevalent in Ireland, with high profile cases and legislation like the Protection Disclosures Act 2014. Unfortunately, the highly emotive issues involved with whistleblowing makes discussion on the phenomena and individual cases difficult. This is compounded by the assumptions of individuals involved, commentators and also academics resulting in confusion. The first key question is always "why do they do it?" followed by two assumptions: whistleblowing exposes wrongdoing so that is good and the whistleblower is a good person; whistleblowers suffer retaliation and disclosures are routinely ignored.

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