David Lewis

There is an increasing recognition of the need to provide ways for people to raise concerns about suspected wrongdoing by promoting internal policies and procedures which offer proper safeguards to actual and potential whistleblowers. Many organisations in both the public and private sectors now have such measures and these display a wide variety of operating modalities: in-house or outsourced, anonymous/confidential/identified, multi or single tiered, specified or open subject matter, etc. As a result of this development, a number of guidelines and policy documents have been produced by authoritative bodies. This article reviews the following five documents from a management perspective, the first two deal with the principles upon which legislation might be based and the others describing good management practice: the Council of Europe Resolution 1729 (COER); Transparency International ‘Recommended Principles for Whistleblowing Legislation’ (TI); European Union Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Opinion (EUWP); International Chamber of Commerce ‘Guidelines on Whistleblowing’ (ICC); and the British Standards Institute ‘Whistleblowing arrangements Code of Practice 2008 (BSI).

This article draws on the work of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to offer a fresh insight into the law’s response to the issue of whistleblowing. In order to achieve this we briefly outline the main themes of his philosophy of otherness which insists that the very essence of ethics springs from the subjection (a succumbing) of the Subject to the ethical call of the Other. We provide a short description of the UK law on whistleblowing before undertaking a Levinasian reading of a particular case in order to consider the dilemma that confronts the judge in framing an ethical response to the whistleblower as Other.

This paper explains why it is desirable for employers to have whistleblowing codes, and draws upon professional guidelines and empirical research to suggest the possible contents of whistleblowing policies and procedures. The paper discusses who and what should be covered and examines the issues of confidentiality and anonymity, reprisals and malicious allegations. It also highlights the need to provide advice and assistance to those who have concerns about wrongdoing at work. The author outlines the possible stages in a whistleblowing procedure, indicates how a concern should be raised and handled, and suggests how a procedure might be communicated and monitored. The paper concludes by emphasising that whistleblowing procedures provide an important safeguard against problems being overlooked and may be vital if legal pitfalls are to be avoided.

This article suggests that the introduction of employment protection rights for whistleblowers has implications for the way in which trust and loyalty should be viewed at the workplace. In particular, it is argued that the very existence of legislative provisions in the United Kingdom reinforces the notion that whistleblowing should not be regarded as either deviant or disloyal behaviour. Thus, the internal reporting of concerns can be seen as an act of trust and loyalty in drawing the employer's attention to wrongdoing. Equally, external whistleblowing may result from a worker's belief that he or she also has a loyalty to the wider society. Given that the interests of employees do not necessarily coincide with those of their employer and that whistleblowers sometimes suffer reprisals, the author concludes that it is inappropriate to impose a contractual duty to report concerns. Instead, employers should endeavour to promote a culture of openness and create confidence in the mechanisms they provide for whistleblowing

When I profess realism about possible worlds, I mean to be taken literally. Possible worlds are what they are, and not some other thing. If asked what sort of thing they are, I cannot give the kind of reply my questioner probably expects: that is, a proposal to reduce possible worlds to something else. I can only ask him to admit that he knows what sort of thing our actual world is, and then explain that possible worlds are more things of that sort, differing not in kind but only in what goes on at them.