Whistle-blowing is defined as bringing to the knowledge of the relevant person, acts of moral or legal corruption with an expectation that some corrective measures will be initiated by the relevant people.
It is to be noted that relevant people are those who are in a position to initiate corrective measures if protests are registered.
In general, there are many people/ groups who may not belong to an organization, but collect information on corruption and whistle-blow by writing articles for newspapers, magazines etc.
, or by informing suitable agencies to take action.
The definition of whistle-blowing is altered as the act of employees or former employees of an organization in making public charges (blaming or pointing fingers) or making charges within the organization about misconduct by one's organization.
Usually these are done by an employee by by-passing approved organizational channels.
The process has four important features.
They are a) Act of disclosure: Information is intentionally disclosed outside the approved organization channels b) Topic: The information is an important moral problem of the organization c) Agents: The person who intentionally disclosed information is an employee or former employee of the organization d) Recipient: The information is conveyed to relevant people/ organization.
Here relevant people means those people or organization are in a position having the needed authority to act on the problem.
Types of whistle-blowing: External: When an employee informs relevant people/ organization that lie outside the employee's organization, the process is defined thus Internal: When an employee informs relevant people within their own organization, the process is defined thus Open: If employees openly reveal their identity while giving the information to the relevant people/ organization, the process is defined thus Anonymous: If employees hide their identity when giving information to the relevant people/ organization, the process is defined thus Parting Open: If employees reveal their reveal their identity only to one or two relevant people/ organization and don't reveal their identity to others, then it becomes partly open and partly anonymous whistle-blowing Whistle-blowing motives: An employee might whistle-blow with both good and bad motives.
An employee's involvement in doing so is said to have a good motive if his/her act is for the benefit of the public.
An employee's involvement in whistle-blowing is for personal benefits alone or for creating business losses to the organization that might benefit some other person/ organization.
Engineers are morally permitted to whistle blow when the following conditions are satisfied.
If the product can create harm to the public to a considerable extent.
If they have already conveyed this information of the product to the superiors.
If all channels in the organization have been informed about the harm, the product can create to the public.