¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß

Maria Kuntz: Today's LBIdea is that, although whistleblowers can face considerable fallout, there are ways to get support and have a more positive experience. Our guest today is Meghan Van Portfliet, Assistant Teaching Professor at the Leeds School of Business. Her research focuses on whistleblowing and organizational ignorance. Thank you for joining us today, Meghan. So great to have you.

Meghan Van Portfliet: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Kuntz: Well, I'd love to start the conversation with a few definitions. Can you tell us, our listeners, how you define whistleblowing and organizational ignorance?

Van Portfliet: Yes. So, I'll start with organizational ignorance because there's less debate about what that definition is. So, strategic organizational ignorance is ignorance that can be produced and sustained deliberately by organizations in ways that serve institutional goals, deflect responsibility, or maintain plausible deniability.

So, basically, it's the way that organizations use ignorance to achieve their goals, which are sometimes goals that are fine, goals that we're okay with as a society, but oftentimes goals that are ones that we, as a society, do not want them to be pursuing. So, whistleblowing has a debate going on in the literature about what counts as whistleblowing.

The definition that is, sort of, the pillar or the main one that's used in the research is it is a disclosure by an organizational member, former or current, of illegal, illegitimate, or unethical behavior to somebody that can affect change basically, right? So, it's disclosing something wrong going on in the organization to somebody that can do something about it.

Now, the debate comes in because some people say, "Okay. If you're just saying that something is going wrong in the organization and you're saying that to somebody that could do something about it, all sorts of stuff counts like whistleblowing, like everything that auditors bring up, anything that a compliance officer brings up." Right?

If you come to your organization and you're saying, "Hey, there's a problem in this file here," and your manager says, "Thanks very much. I'll go fix that," under that definition, that would count as whistleblowing. And I'm pretty sure most auditors and compliance officers don't think, "Hey, I'm a professional whistleblower. And that's my job." Right?

So, there's something else going on for a lot of people that makes them a whistleblower. And that has to do with the retaliation that they receive, right? So, there are researchers that say, "You're not a whistleblower until you disclose this and you get the pushback and the retaliation. And that's what makes you the whistleblower," which makes sense in a way, but I don't like that definition.

I like the first one because that allows for there to be a successful whistleblowing. If whistleblowing is always something that is detrimental to the person speaking up, why are we encouraging whistleblowing? Why are we trying to protect whistleblowers through legislation? So, there's a debate, but that's, sort of, the landscape of it. It has to do with disclosing wrongdoing in organizations and potentially being retaliated against for that or not.

Kuntz: So, it definitely sounds like we have a spectrum in whistleblowing, really, maybe more high-risk, extreme cases, and less risky. You, kind of, gave an example of the lower end, but can you just give us two examples to juxtapose the spectrum of whistleblowing.

Van Portfliet: Yeah. So, whistleblowing that is successful, anytime an auditor comes and says, "Hey, there's a mistake in your books," and the company says, "Hey, I'm going to fix that. Thanks very much," that could count as whistleblowing. That would be what I would consider a successful whistleblowing. And this is what we should be aiming for, for organizations to want the information, say thank you, deal with it, and then we all move forward with our lives and nobody suffers.

On the other end, you have something like Edward Snowden, right? So, Edward Snowden bringing this up, knowing that it's going to ruin his life. Well, debatable whether his life is ruined. He had to leave the country, right? He's still not back in the United States. If he comes back, he's going to be prosecuted for espionage. So, you know, you have this opposite, sort of, extreme where you say something and you are retaliated against, the organization comes after you with their full might, and you have to change your whole life.

It's upended and you have to deal with that. And everything in between, right? So, there's small retaliations, or the retaliation at first and then they change their mind, or they start dealing with it okay and then it becomes too much for them to handle and then retaliation happens. So, it is a full spectrum of speaking up about wrongdoing in organizations.

Kuntz: When you say it's going well, I mean, I think many of us could probably assume what the worst-case retaliation looks like. I mean, you mentioned Snowden, and he could be facing espionage charges, but what are some maybe forms of retaliation that people are concerned about or common ones you've seen in your research?

Van Portfliet: It really runs the gamut. So, I guess I want to put out there that the research says most people don't suffer for speaking up, right? So, when you have surveys in various countries and they don't use the word whistleblowing and they just say, "Hey, have you seen something wrong in your organization? Have you said something about it? Have you suffered for speaking up?" it's usually 70% to 75% of people have not suffered, right?

"Yes, I've said something. No, I haven't suffered for it." So, whistleblowing is a minority of cases, right, where you actually are retaliated against, which it's important to say that 25% is way too much, right? Like, nobody should be retaliated against. And the retaliation that they face can be really severe. So, it's like blacklisting, right? So, they make your work life intolerable.

You're isolated. I've seen people moved from their office to a basement, basically closet that they cleaned out and turned into an office for them so that they were away from everybody. You have all of your work taken away from you. You have legal battles that you're trying to face where the organization can send you for a psychiatric evaluation.

Like, "We need you to go see this doctor and be evaluated." Anything to, you know, cases like Theranos, where the company hired private investigators to follow and harass the whistleblowers that were speaking up. So, the retaliation is huge. So, it can run the whole range of death, suicide, that range of things. And, like, your colleagues don't talk to you anymore. Your friends at work don't want anything to do with you. And you start to be stigmatized and ostracized. And it depends on what you're speaking up about and what kind of organization you're in, you know, that retaliation can vary widely, but it can take lots of forms. It's not a particular thing.

Kuntz: Yeah. Lots of considerations to make if one is thinking about raising a concern. So, knowing that, what motivates or prevents people from reporting wrongdoing? And could you be a whistleblower without maybe even realizing it?

Van Portfliet: Yes. I think, in my experience, most whistleblowers aren't waking up and saying, "Today, I'm going to be a whistleblower," right? Some are. So, Edward Snowden did, right? He woke up and he said, "Okay. Today is the day that I'm going to do this," but he had the experiences of Bill Binney and Thomas Drake before him, right, who had tried to speak up about issues with similar programs. And Thomas Drake, right, had all of his security clearances revoked. He was charged with espionage.

He was, like, a top security guy. The only job he could get was at an Apple store, right? So, again, you see your life change. So, sometimes, people do say, "Okay. I'm going to go into this wide-eyed. And I'm going to make this decision." I think we can talk about that later. Like, if you know what you're doing, that actually sets you up to get through it a lot better off than if you don't know what you're doing. But most whistleblowers are people at work.

They work really hard. They're very dedicated to their organization. And they come across a problem. And they're just trying to solve this problem. They see something that's not working, they report it, and they're a little bit confused when they get this backlash, right, of, like, "That's not your issue. Don't worry about that. This isn't something that you need to be reporting."

And it's confusing, right, because it's like, well, there is, there's an issue, and this is wrong. And to be told that, "No, it's fine. Leave it alone," you're, sort of, like, "What?" And so, they just, sort of, persist in trying to solve this problem and then it escalates, right, where the organization doesn't want that problem to be solved. And then you have this interplay between the whistleblower and the organization. Once they're starting to be retaliated against, they have their work taken away from them. They're sent for psychiatric treatment.

And they're, sort of, asking, like, "What is going on here?" Right? A lot of whistleblowers that I know, they don't realize that they're a whistleblower until somebody else tells them that they are. They go and they seek help or they're in the news, and some advocacy organization reaches out, and they're told that they're a whistleblower, and they're like, "Oh," and then things start to make sense. So, I think that is how most whistleblowing unfolds.

People are just trying to solve a problem and then they stumble onto something that they weren't supposed to know, weren't supposed to see, right? It's that organizational ignorance is starting to break down and then the organization has to try and react or try and maintain the ignorance or discredit the whistleblower so that knowledge, if it gets out, is not seen as legitimate.

Kuntz: Yeah. You mentioned media coverage. What have you seen in terms of how media coverage impacts cases of whistleblowing or why do certain cases get picked up?

Van Portfliet: Yeah. So, media coverage has a real impact on how the whistleblowing is able to impact change, right, because one individual against an organization, the organization is really powerful. They have all of the data on the individual, right? What are their work records? They have the power, like, "We're not going to fire you for whistleblowing. We're going to fire you for being late these three times over the past 10 years," or something like that.

So, if you're just trying to get the wrongdoing fixed, right, if you're trying to get the problem fixed, and the organization is like, "If you keep speaking up about this, then we can take your work away. We can move your office so you're not around people. We can isolate you. We can find a reason to fire you that's not related to your whistleblowing on paper," then the power is with the organization. However, when you get the whistleblower to a journalist, they can amplify that voice, right? So, they can get that message out to the public.

And then you start to have more pressure on the organization that they need to look into this, they need to change, which is sometimes good for the whistleblower as far as getting the wrongdoing fixed, but it can also amplify the organization's attempts to discredit that whistleblower, right? So, if the organization is going to say, "Well, this person isn't trustworthy. We shouldn't believe what they're saying because look at all of these flaws,"Ìý

And none of us are perfect. None of us are perfect in any part of our life, even including our work life, right? So, if an organization can just parade all of the mistakes that you've made out for public attention, that can go badly for the whistleblower, but I think the whistleblower just wants the issue to be fixed. They're not trying to be a hero. They're not trying to be glorified as somebody that is saving society even though, in a lot of ways, that's what a lot of them do. So, I think media coverage is... it can be a double-edged sword.

Like, it does say, "Hey, this is something that is important," and it gets other people's attention on the organization and the issue, and it can help get it fixed. It can amplify some of the issues for the whistleblower. I do also think, though, that if the issue is known and the organization is creating a narrative about the whistleblower, if the whistleblower can access the media to counter that narrative, it goes better for them, right?

So, I think a really good example of this is Francis Haugen, who came out and spoke about issues with Facebook algorithms, how algorithms are promoting hate, and that Facebook knows about this and is having all sorts of real impacts on our society. She had a PR firm. She took down all of her personal social media pages. And she started talking to a journalist for a long time, right, and, feeding the information to a journalist and saying, "Hey. Okay. Now, we think we have enough evidence that we can go public with this." She had it all prepared on the front end.

So, when Facebook started to say, "This is some deranged employee," like, she wasn't. She had media out there supporting her, showing that she had evidence. You know, she was very poised and graceful the whole time. She got access to get onto the news and give the public a story in a way that painted her as credible, right? And she wasn't talking poorly about the organization.

She was just saying, "Hey, this is an issue. And I want to solve this issue because I love Facebook. I love all the people that I work with," right. So, she wasn't like bad organization versus whistleblower. It was like, here's the issue. And because she was able to be strategic about how she engaged the media, she's fine. Like, she is probably one of the more successful cases of whistleblowing that we've seen recently.

Kuntz: I know, when we spoke previously, you also mentioned using legal support as an aid to success in whistleblowing. Could you talk a little about that? I mean, you mentioned PR firm. Did she also use legal support, or what's the advantage there?

Van Portfliet: You are protected as a whistleblower. There's lots and lots of laws here in the United States, I think there's over 60 laws, that protect, you know, various types of speaking up in various industries. So, most of the time, if you're speaking up about wrongdoing in the organization, you are legally protected. They can't fire you. If they're harassing you or retaliating against you, you can file for damages against you.

So, understanding how to speak up in the first place is really important because you can't just go tell everybody and you can't just run to the media the first way. So, legal support is really good at guiding you through how do you do this in a way where you are the most protected, where you're not just going to be fired immediately for breach of contract and then you're fighting a legal case against this organization with no income.

You can't get another job because you've been blacklisted in your industry, right? And so, all these, sort of, things start to snowball. So, yes, legal support. And again, it's difficult because people don't realize what they're doing is whistleblowing, but as soon as you think that, like, you might be whistleblowing, lawyers are one of the best defenses.

They can guide you through exactly how do you speak up, how do you phrase it, what evidence can you take, what evidence can you not take so that you're not exposing yourself to legal action from the organization for theft of property or something like that. I think that lawyers can really help guide you through the process.

Now, lawyers aren't going to help guide you through the process with your reputation intact, which is why media is important, but they can help you protect yourself from unintentionally crossing a line into criminal activity on your part when you're just trying to expose this wrongdoing or help. There's right ways to do it, and there's wrong ways to do it. And it is very complicated. So, the sooner you can talk to a lawyer, the better you are in my experience.

Kuntz: You've shared a lot about the challenges with speaking up. There's adversity. People get legal firms. They get PR firms to help them. What would you say to folks to explain to them why it's important to keep speaking up?

Van Portfliet: Yes. So, speaking up is good for society, right? We, as a society, want whistleblowers to expose the wrongdoing that is happening within organizations because there is information asymmetry between organizations and the public. And that speaks, again, to organizational ignorance. Some of that is fine. We don't want to know everything that's going on. We don't need to know everything that's going on in organizations.

But because organizations can slip, you know, they can cut corners, they can cover things up that they think will damage their reputation, they can be incentivized by wrong thing or be structured the wrong way and have it very easy for people to be engaging in fraud, things like that, we, as a society, benefit from whistleblowers speaking up about this.

And there are examples of this, right? Boeing, airplanes. Do you want to get on an airplane that has, like, parts missing or, like, defective parts being used in the airplane when you're that high. And there's news about airplane crashes happening a lot more, I would say, recently.

I have whistleblowers in nuclear power plants, right? So, if there's health and safety issues going on in a nuclear power plant, but they're being covered up because the contract won't be paid out or whatever if they don't finish on time, and so they've, kind of, skipped some corners in there to make sure that they're getting paid for that, which is important, right, because people worked hard, and if the contract goes through, then people don't get paid, and that's their livelihood.

And it's not just that, like, "Oh, we want to make as much money as possible and do bad work," but it's when things go wrong and then it's like, "Okay. How do we fix this?" And we can get into a situation where we're compromising other people for the sake of meeting a contract or something like that.

Kuntz: So, it sounds like it takes some altruism, perhaps, right? I mean, there's this greater good that we're considering. There's health and safety concerns. And people have concerns about their own life, their family, their friends, their job, their safety and security. And it's a big decision. "Am I going to put myself out there?" And I think, to your point, we need people to. If we don't have those brave people, you know, we have things that affect large parts of our nation or the globe.

Van Portfliet: Yes. There's lots that can just go wrong. And having people that are willing to just raise their hand and say, "This is wrong," and pointing them out allows organizations to either fix it or allows society to demand the change that we want to see.

Kuntz: So, hopefully, the folks listening don't find themselves in a high-stakes situation where they have to be a whistleblower, but I'm sure lots of people have encountered things that make them question, you know, they're uncomfortable or they're like, "Should I report that? I'm not sure." Did your research provide any insight on how organizations and teams can create a culture where people feel free to speak up?

Van Portfliet: Yes. So, there's lots of research on this. My research shows that organizations need to be aware that any and no response to a whistleblower is a response, right? So, if a whistleblower or somebody trying to fix a problem say, they're not a whistleblower yet or it's not escalated that far, "Hey, there's some financial irregularities in these books," right, so no response, that's a response to the whistleblower that says, "I don't care. It's not important," or, "We don't trust you," or something like that. That's a response.

Not responding to the whistleblower but putting out a PR memo, right, or PR, press release, to the public saying, "Look at our books," right, like, or, "Here's our financial statements," that's a response. Somebody suddenly not talking to the whistleblower at work, that's a response.

So, organizations, which we, again, have to remember is just a group of people working together, need to know that when something is reported and, like, the whistleblower is interpreting the environment around them and seeing how the organization is going to respond to that, it's a vulnerable thing to do, to say, "Hey, this is wrong. And I think we need to fix it," so organizations should be prepared to respond. That's the first important thing about a culture.

"Thank you very much for that report. This is how we're going to follow up on it. We'll be in touch with you in X amount of time," and then actually being in touch in that timeframe is going to make that whistleblower feel like the organization takes them seriously. It will prevent subsequent reports because if you report something and you get no response and you don't feel like your organization's doing anything about it, we tend to go to a more independent party, right? That's what the research says.

If you go to your manager, they do nothing, you go to somebody a little bit more independent, that's usually the senior manager, and then we start to go outside, regulators, media, those types of people. So, responding well, the most important thing to set that culture. Like, "Yes, we have this report. This is what we're doing about it," you know, and you can't provide all of those details because you have to protect the people that are being accused, but responding, and then publicly reporting on your whistleblowing activity.

So, I was looking for an example of this. And the city of Oakland in California did a really good job with this. They basically said, "Hey, we had X many whistleblowing reports during this timeframe. Here's what they're on. Here's what we were doing to investigate them. Here's how many were closed and what the outcome was. And here's how many are still ongoing."

And putting that in your annual report or publicly publishing that shows the public, but also your employees, that you take this stuff seriously, right? Like, "Here's what happens when you disclose something in our organization." And that organization happened to be a city, right, which is perhaps a slightly different motivations than a corporate entity, but...

Kuntz: But that's incredible transparency. And transparency builds trust.

Van Portfliet: It does. Yes. So, responding, being open about it, and then, I think, celebrating your whistleblowers. Like, if somebody brings something forward, you... So, if you can catch a problem before it goes public, you're saving yourself money, reputation. It's good for organizations to have whistleblowers, right? We want them.

And so, just a little award or a recognition on a Slack channel or something like that goes a really long way to showing other people like, "Hey, we care about this. This is something that we want in our organization. And this is something that we celebrate here." And that does set the culture for, "I'm not afraid," that nothing's going to be done because the two reasons that people don't speak up are fear of futility, fear that you're going to speak up and it won't matter, nothing's going to be done, and then behind that, fear of retaliation, so, "I'm going to speak up and something's going to happen to me."

Kuntz: Well, hopefully, most people aren't going to be encountering this day in and in day out. And hopefully, most of our listeners don't have to face this kind of ethical dilemma at a large scale. But I think it's been really helpful to understand that the risks and the type of whistleblowing can be a smaller scale and really even just having some resources and things to think about before folks take those next steps.

Van Portfliet: Yes, for sure. Get a lawyer. That's my best advice.

Kuntz: Get a lawyer and a PR agency.

Van Portfliet: Yes. For sure.

Kuntz: Well, this has been really eye-opening, Meghan. Thank you so much for joining us.

Van Portfliet: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Kuntz: Thank you again for listening to Leeds Business Insights. Make sure you're one of the first to hear every episode by subscribing to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Leeds Business Insights podcast is a production of the Leeds School of Business and is produced by University FM. We'll see you next time.