"Whistle-Blowing and Employee Loyalty" (Duska)

WB: A is an act of whistle-blowing iff A is an act by an employee of informing the public of immoral or illegal behavior of an employer or supervisor. (241)

Some (allegedly) controversial questions related to whistle-blowing:

• Is it morally right to report the shady or suspect practices of the organization one works for?
• Is a whistle-blower a stool pigeon or a dedicated citizen?
• Does a person have an obligation to the public that overrides his obligation to his employer or does he simply betray a loyalty and become a traitor if he reports his company?

Central Question: When is it morally permissible to blow the whistle?

Recall De George's principle:

A person, S, is morally PERMITTED to blow the whistle if:

1. the harm that will be done by the product to the public is serious and considerable;
2. S makes S's concerns known to S's superiors; and
3. getting no satisfaction from S's immediate superiors, S exhausts the channels available within the corporation, including going to the board of directors.

Note especially clauses (2) and (3). De George is claiming here that a person must meet certain obligations of loyalty to one's company before he or she is morally permitted to blow the whistle on some feature of the company's operations. Why? Allegedly because each act of whistle-blowing is "seen as a violation of loyalty" to one's employer.

Duska, however, rejects these so-called "loyalty" constraints on acts of whistle-blowing. Duska writes:

However, I fail to see how one has an obligation of loyalty to one's company, so I disagree with their perception of the problem, and their starting point. The difference in perception is important because those who think employees have an obligation of loyalty to a company fail to take into account a relevant moral difference between persons and corporations and between corporations and other kinds of groups where loyalty is appropriate. I want to argue that one does not have an obligation of loyalty to a company, even a prima facie one, because companies are not the kind of things that are proper objects of loyalty. I then want to show that to make them objects of loyalty gives them a moral status they do not deserve and in raising their status, one lowers the status of the individuals who work for companies. (243)

What is loyalty anyway?

Duska has an interesting position on loyalty:

Loyalty is ordinarily construed as a state of being constant and faithful in a relation implying trust or confidence, as a wife to husband, friend to friend, parent to child, lord to vassal, etc. According to John Ladd "it is not founded on just any casual relationship, but one a specific kind of relationship or tie. The ties that bind the persons together provide the basis of loyalty."

I don't owe loyalty to just anyone I encounter. Rather I owe loyalty to persons with whom I have special relationships. I owe it to my children, my spouse, my parents, my friends and certain groups, those groups that are formed for the mutual enrichment of the members. It is important to recognize that in any relationship that demands loyalty, the relationship works both ways and involves mutual enrichment. Loyalty is incompatible with self-interest, because it is something that necessarily requires we go beyond self-interest. (243)

Duska goes to claim that the relationship between you and your corporate employer is not one of mutual enrichment, thus bonds of loyalty are incapable or arising through nature of the relationship.

A business or corporation does two things in the free enterprise system. It produces a good or service and makes a profit. The making of a profit, however, is the primary function of a business as a business.... People bound together in a business are not bound together for mutual fulfillment and support, but to divide labor so the business makes a profit. (243)

The cold hard truth is that the goal of profit is what gives birth to a company and forms that particular group. Money is what ties the group together. But in such a commercialized venture, with such a goal there is no loyalty, or at least none need be expected. An employer will release an employee and an employee will walk away from an employer when it is profitable to do so. That's business. It is perfectly permissible. Contrast that with the ties between a lord and vassal [or a parent and her child]. A lord could not in good conscience wash his hands of his vassal, nor could a vassal in good conscience abandon his lord. What bound them was mutual enrichment, not profit. (244)

Be able to explain Duska's distinction between DEVOTION TO ONE'S JOB and DEVOTION TO ONE'S COMPANY.

What, then, is the nature of our obligations to our corporate employers?

Here's what Duska has to say in response to this final question:

One need hardly be an enemy of business to be suspicious of a demand of loyalty to something whose primary reason for existence is the making of profit. It is simply the case that I have no duty of loyalty to the business or organization. Rather I have a duty to return responsible work for fair wages. The commercialization of work dissolves the type of relationship that requires loyalty. It sets up merely contractual relationships. One sells one's labor but not one's self to a company or organization. (245)