Chapter 9: Stopping Organizational Wrongdoing: What Price Do Whistle-Blowers Pay?

Each year, Time magazine selects a “Person of the Year,” representing the editorial board’s view as to which individual affected history most during that year (Lacayo & Ripley, 2002). In 2002, Time selected three persons of the year. All three—Sherron Watkins, Coleen Rowley, and Cynthia Cooper—blew the whistle on wrongdoing in large organizations (Enron, FBI, and WorldCom, respectively) where they had been employed at the time of their whistle-blowing.

All three incidents were similar in some important ways. First, as with most whistle-blowers (Miceli & Near, 1992), all three had blown the whistle internally first to someone in their organizations; in fact, all three became known to outsiders only when someone else revealed the whistle-blowing incident to the media and to government agencies. Second, at the time of the Time interview, none of the three whistle-blowers had suffered severe retaliation, although Watkins quit after a few months “because she wasn’t given much to do” (Lacayo & Ripley, 2002). This may be surprising because it is contrary to popular belief that all whistle-blowers experience severe retaliation, perhaps because this was the case for whistle-blowers portrayed in such movies as Silkwood, Serpico, and The Insider.