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Session Number: 2461

Ethical Responsibility of Engineers for Alumnus Whistleblowing

Nancy J. White, David N. Ford

Central Michigan University / Texas A&M University

Introduction

Since the Watergate cover-up of the mid-1970s the US culture has begun to support the idea of whistleblowing and the belief that persons with knowledge should be encouraged to expose government and private mismanagement, wrongdoing, illegal conduct or conduct dangerous to the health and safety of others. Congress established the Office of Inspector General1 (OIG) in 1978. The OIG maintains a 24-hour hotline 2 for people to report government mismanagement, wrongdoing, illegal conduct, or conduct dangerous to the health and safety of others. The General Accounting Office (GAO) 3 was established by Congress to improve the efficiency of the U.S. government financial audits and reviews. Another example, which shows the support for whistleblowing, is the appearance in employment law of the public policy exception to the employment-at-will doctrine. Historically the employment-at-will doctrine held that an employer may terminate an employee for any reason or no reason. Over time the law has restricted this right of employers and some employers may not terminate persons based on race, creed, sex, national origin and to some extent disability. 4

Whistleblowing does need to strike a balance with competing values. The Government Accounting Office describes the need to strike a “balance between the objective of encouraging legitimate disclosure of waste, mismanagement and abuse of authority and that of retaining management authority and accountability.”

Parker5 defines whistleblowing as “the release of organizational information to the public which superiors or colleagues would prefer to be kept secret.” Two types of whistleblowers exist:

· Alumnus whistleblowers: who are persons who reveal information about his/her previous organization either on or after departing from it.

· Pure whistleblowers: which are persons who reveal information about their organization while remaining there.

A strong commitment to highly ethical behavior is important to filling engineering's role in society. Does this extend to whistleblowing? Engineering is a profession with specialized

“Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Ford, D., & White, N. (2002, June), Ethical Responsibility Of Engineers For Alumnus Whistleblowing Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10955