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This chapter begins with a discussion of the three important ethical points about science, whistleblowing, and democracy, following the tragic deaths of several children in northern Indiana from rare types of cancer due to alleged exposure to ethylene dichloride released by a nearby chemical plant. It then discusses the themes and limits of the book, threats posed by pollution, and public health in developed and developing nations. An overview of the chapters included in this book is also presented.

This chapter examines whether state secrecy is commonly abused in contemporary America. A number of scholars argue that the real and apparent abuses of state secrecy are due not to flaws in the Constitution but rather to a lack of courage and wisdom on the part of representatives and citizens. The chapter challenges this claim and suggests that the Framers viewed state secrecy as an essential element of statecraft, and that they vested the authority to keep secrets in the executive because they saw it as best suited to exercise this power. It explains how the regulatory mechanisms that have been championed in recent decades, such as the judicial enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act, have proven ineffective at exposing wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the regulatory mechanisms that have proven effective at exposing wrongdoing, whistleblowing and leaking, are condemned as unlawful or undemocratic and therefore illegitimate. The chapter also considers oversight and regulation of state secrecy by Congress.

This chapter examines the circumstances under which an official will be justified in violating laws that prohibit unauthorized disclosures of classified information. It explains why we cannot rely on the practice of whistleblowing to counter the misuse of state secrecy. It argues that an official may “blow the whistle” if he/she encounters classified information that clearly reveals wrongdoing posing an immediate and serious threat to the public interest, and if he/she makes a good faith effort to minimize the harm that the publication of this information may cause national security. It also asserts that the official must identify himself/herself so that we can assess whether his/her view of what constitutes a wrongful exercise of executive power is a disinterested one. Finally, it shows that would-be whistleblowers have little incentive to disclose their identity, because doing so makes them vulnerable to retaliation from their managers and colleagues.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book's main findings, beginning with the deep sense of anxiety that pervades contemporary discussions on state secrecy. This anxiety stems not from the concern that state secrecy is contrary to democracy but rather from the concern that the government can use state secrecy to conceal wrongdoing. The institutions charged with regulating the use of state secrecy, Congress and the courts, have struggled to detect wrongdoing owing to constraints of information and expertise. The book has also explored whether whistleblowing and leaking constitute legitimate means of regulating state secrecy. This chapter outlines some of the means by which we might minimize the downsides of our dependence on unauthorized disclosures of classified information and argues that we need to ensure how executives and those who watch over them will utilize responsibly the discretion they are bound to enjoy.

As professionals, engineers live by codes of ethics that ascribe to them a paramount obligation to protect the safety, health, and welfare of the public, an obligation that frequently implies whistleblowing. Yet, as employees of corporations, their obligation is to respect the authority of managers who sometimes give insufficient attention to safety and who also severely punish whistleblowers for their alleged disloyalty and damage to the corporation. The upshot is a clash of professional obligations to employers and to the public, as well as conflicts between codified professional duties, personal ideals, and personal well-being. The voluminous literature on whistleblowing has neglected the relevance of personal commitments to professional responsibilities. This chapter examines personal rights and responsibilities in deciding how to meet professional obligations; increased personal burdens when others involved in collective endeavors fail to meet their responsibilities; the role of virtues, especially personal integrity and self-respect, as they bear on “living with oneself”; and personal commitments to moral ideals beyond minimum requirements.

The shortcomings of the Finnish child protection system have been vividly highlighted by the reports of historic abuse in residential and foster care and by some fatal tragedies. Nevertheless, very little academic research on errors and mistakes in child protection exists. The chapter thus aims to capture this fragmented and unexpressed field in the Finnish system. In doing so, the chapter presents and analyses the preventative and reactive approaches to errors as defined by child welfare legislation. Examples of preventative approaches are regulations requiring some services and practitioners to be licenced and registered, a rather recent way to regulate practice and its quality. Examples of reactive approaches are the rights given to service-users (parents as well as children) to make complaints about and appeal decisions and the treatment they receive. A new practice is the regulation introduced in 2014 giving social workers the right and duty to report problems they encounter in their practice, a form of request for ‘institutional whistle-blowing’. In addition to the legal guidelines, the chapter will examine the national policy programmes which indirectly address errors. These programmes aim to guarantee that services are ‘rightly timed and tailored’ and that the assessments of children’s needs and risks are ‘correctly’ made. These reactive and preventative approaches may, however, have some unintended consequences which will be empirically highlighted. Consequently, it becomes clear that the Finnish approach is coloured by trust in practitioners and service-users and their skills, competences and good intentions to tackle errors, mistakes and wrongdoings. This reflects the overall rationale of child protection as a form of service provided by public administration. Trust may overrule a critical examination of – and learning from – errors and mistakes. As the very organisation of social and health care services is rapidly changing, the trust-based approach might soon be challenged.

This chapter evaluates the status of right to free speech and suggests future developments in this area. The legal protection for the right to free speech at work is limited to protection of the right to blow the whistle on wrongdoing or malpractice at work. The more general right to freedom of expression, as defined in the main international human rights documents, does not survive entry to the workplace, and is not adequately protected against work based sanctions. The position seems to be, rather, that the employee's right to free speech is protected via his freedom to leave his employment.

The epilogue reviews the main themes of the book. It outlines important differences between the book’s normative account of espionage and counter-intelligence and the dirty hands approach, the contractarian approach, and the just-war theory approach. It outlines prospective lines of enquiry, such as the impact of secrecy on the criminal justice system, the ethics of practices related to espionage (notably policing, corporate espionage, whistleblowing, and investigative journalism). and the moral risks which intelligence officers incur in the course of their work.

Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, Disciplinary Bye-laws 2017, article 9(1) (‘Any person may bring to the attention of the head of staff any facts or matters indicating that a member, a firm or a provisional member may have become liable to disciplinary action under these bye-laws or the [Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board] Scheme or the [Joint Disciplinary Scheme]; and it is the duty of every member, where it is in the public interest for him to do so, to report to the head of staff any such facts or matters of which he is aware’)

This chapter discusses the ethical issues faced by whistleblowers as seen in the film The Insider (1999). The film tells the story of whistleblower Jerry Wigand (Russell Crowe) who decides to go public with one of Big Tobacco's closely held secrets—that they have been manipulating nicotine levels to keep their customers addicted to their product. It illustrates Wigand's struggle to decide between doing well by his family and doing well by society. His story can be described as one of depth and pathos. He wins, but his victory comes at a heavy cost: he loses his family, his lifestyle, and his reputation.

This chapter examines the organisations we work in and is divided into three sections. It examines the concept of organisational culture and highlights how ethical behaviour is managed in organisations, with details of competencies. It then focusses on three pillars of ethical organisations; ethical leaders, ethical staff, and systems and structures within an organisation. It utilises the concept of whistleblowing to illustrate the collapse of the ethical conversation in organisations. Whistleblowing is an important concept as it lies at the intersection of interprofessional ethics. This is because professionals can manifest ethical aims through different forms of behaviour in line with their own professional standards. Even when the aims of those standards are aligned the route to them may not be. Finally, it focusses on the notion of person-organisation‘fit’.

This chapter considers the apparent complicity illustrated in a professional ‘turning a blind eye’ to poor or inadequate support to older people. Contextual influences on practice are discussed through examination of two public reports published over 45 years apart: Sans Everything and the 2013 Francis Report on the Mid Staffordshire Foundation NHS Trust in England. The chapter discusses whistle blowing, drawing on Adams and Balfour’s work on ‘administrative evil’. It suggests a target-driven, standards-based regulatory and management context to adult safeguarding practice may itself create circumstances where institutional neglect and abuse of older people can take root. Rather than suggesting professionals are hapless victims of a malevolent system, the chapter suggests that chopped-up, rule-bound, target-driven contexts to health and care systems that professionals work within, may mask the harm vulnerable people using them may suffer.

In light of the foregoing discussions of loyalty, the conclusion of the book revisits contemporary issues instantiating the treachery and ambivalence of loyalty discussed in the book's introduction. These issues, loyalty in disaster and loyalty in business, are engaged in greater depth, placing ideas of Royce's in dialogue with those of contemporary scholars. While it has been suggested that by Naomi Zack that diligence and integrity are the prime virtues to preserve and promote in times of disaster, it is argued in this chapter that these virtues, as Zack understands them, amount to loyalty. Moreover, in addition to loyalty, loyalty to loyalty is required in times of disaster. In the realm of business, the ethics of whistleblowing is appraised through the lenses of Royce's philosophy of loyalty. It is argued that responsible whistleblowing is done with loyal intentions and that corporations should maintain mechanisms for internal whistleblowing, giving such complaints due consideration. In the event that due consideration is not given, the whistleblower is justified in whistleblowing externally, if so doing is consistent with loyalty to loyalty.

This chapter considers the politics of science in Arctic Alaska during the 1980s. It emphasizes how Ronald Reagan’s Interior Department altered the findings of government scientists to downplay the dangers of oil development. It also explains the key findings of caribou biologists related to the Porcupine caribou herd and the Arctic Refuge coastal plain. The chapter profiles two former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists—Fran Mauer and Pamela A. Miller—and foregrounds their perspectives on the period’s skulduggery. It recounts Miller’s story of becoming a whistleblower and leaking a controversial report to the New York Times in 1988. It also features stunning photographs taken by Mauer and Miller—of the Porcupine caribou herd and Prudhoe Bay oil development—that were included in The Last Great Wilderness. The slide show provided a grassroots mechanism for disseminating suppressed scientific knowledge to the public.

Legal systems require information and often reward whistleblowers. Such informants, however, are considered snitches in both literature and popular culture, where loyalty to comrades is thought a manly attribute. There are easy cases in American literature, where the courageous and loyal character does not inform on another because the reader and the author so plainly disapprove of the rule that has been violated. Refusing to inform on a runaway slave is one such easy example. This chapter argues that law is most concerned with behavior among strangers, while literature is focused on loyalty to clan. Cases in which the two are in tension are rare. Faulkner’s well-known story “Barn Burning” is one coming-of-age story in which the conflict is apparent, and this chapter explores that work as well as more abstract questions regarding loyalty, courage, and the revelation of information.

This chapter aims to bring order to the multitude of different concepts that are discussed within corporate ethics. In the first part, compliance as a minimum ethical requirement is presented. Compliance risks are illustrated by examples from the fields of corruption, antitrust violations, and data privacy. Afterwards, the key tasks of compliance management are explained. In the second part, different perspectives on corporate responsibility are discussed: Friedman’s view, the honorable merchant, and the management of moral risks. In the third and largest part, different approaches to corporate social responsibility and their respective criticisms are presented. The chapter closes with some thoughts on corporate social irresponsibility and on the experimental approach to CSR.

Since the 1980s, well-publicized cases of research misconduct have increased public concerns about the integrity of research and stimulated responses from governments, research institutions, funding agencies, and journals. Surveys indicate that the prevalence of misconduct may be larger than many researchers would like to acknowledge and that it occurs in all fields of research. Research misconduct is not limited to one particular nation or region but is an international problem. This chapter examines the definition of research misconduct, distinguishes between misconduct and questionable research practices, considers factors in the research environment that contribute to misconduct, discusses educating and mentoring to prevent misconduct, and describes policies and procedures for reporting, investigating, and adjudicating misconduct.