Whistleblowers'
concern about retaliation justified
Sherron Watkins was not without justification in her concern that she might suffer retaliation for exposing the accounting scandal at Enron, according to Joyce Rothschild, who has conducted the only national study of whistleblowers from all walks of life.
Rothschild, professor of sociology at Virginia Tech, did an eight-year study, conducting in-depth interviews with 300 whistleblowers and more than 200 surveys of silent observers (people who observed wrongdoing but remained silent). She found that 69 percent were fired as a result of exposing wrongdoing, even when they only reported this wrongdoing to higher-ups within their own employer’s organization. Of those who left their organization to report misconduct to outside authorities, Rothschild found that over 80 percent were fired.
Rothschild, who has published five academic articles on her studies, found in many cases that the moment senior management realized that an individual might blow the whistle, "they began a race to discredit the would-be whistleblower before the whistleblower could discredit them." The whistleblowers seldom emerged unscathed. In 84 percent of her cases, former whistleblowers said they became depressed and could no longer trust the managers of organizations. In 53 percent of the cases, whistleblowers suffered deterioration even in their family relations.
Statistical analysis of the data found that the larger and more systemic the observed misconduct reported by the whistleblower, the more swift and severe the reprisals. Gender, race, age, educational level, and years on the job did not insulate a whistleblower from retaliation.
So what stirs people to take these personal risk? Rothschild's studies found that 79 percent of her whistleblowers were stirred to action by their values. "Sometimes they said that they got their sense of right and wrong from the codes of professional ethics embedded in their various occupations; sometimes they attributed their moral compass to religious upbringing or family teaching; but in nearly all cases, they said they were trying to do ‘the right thing,’" Rothschild said. "Of the remaining ones, 16 percent said that their whistleblowing had been defensive: they were afraid that they would be blamed for the misconduct of others.
"If we want people to come forward and to speak with candor to their superiors, then we will need to shore up legislation that will better protect whistleblowers from the swift and almost certain retaliation they now face. Moreover," Rothschild said, "given the preponderance of organizations in my study whose first response was to get rid of the whistleblower and to suppress whatever critical information that may have carried, the evidence suggests strongly that organizations of all types have a long way to go in learning how to tolerate and even benefit from the dissenting views of conscientious whistleblowers."
Rothschild is working on a book tentatively called Whistleblower Disclosures: The Battle to Control Information about Organizational Corruption based on her long-time study.
-Sally Harris
Content of this column may be reused so long as credit is given to Virginia Tech and the researchers.