Whistleblowing Cases

We will discuss these cases in the final tutorial.



1. A large Dutch manufacturer, who operates in an overseas country, has been paying private security guards there to assault and intimidate trade unionists. An employee discovers this and steals his bosses' mobile phone, containing proof of this criminal activity. He then sends the phone to a journalist.

2. Anna works for a Dutch religious charity that lobbys the Dutch government to make buying and selling sex in the Netherlands criminal. Anna discovers that the Chief Financial Officer of the charity regularly pays for sex. There is evidence of this (in the form of text messages) on the Chief Financial Officer's personal smartphone. Anna accesses the smartphone (lying on the desk at work) and forwards these text messages to a journalist.

3. An engineering company (Lockseat) recently paid an employee of another company (Boadin) to hand over confidential research and development data for a new jet engine. This is unlawful, and Boadin are suing Lockseat for 10 million euro in compensation. But Boadin have no real proof, and so are probably going to lose the lawsuit. Luckly for Boadin, the CEO of Lockseat feels guilty, and so confesses. Lockseat's shares drop to half their value, losing Lockseat's shareholders millions of euros in their investment.


4. A large pharmaceutical company (Baeder) has been performing several experiments on a new drug, but have only been publishing the successful experiments. So everyone thinks that Baeder's new drug is extremely effective at fighting malaria, when in fact the drug is completely ineffective at fighting malaria. Baeder's behaviour here is completely legal. An employee of Baeder thinks that this behaviour is immoral, and so publishes the confidential experiments, proving that the drug is not effective. As a result, Baeder will most likely go bankrupt as a result of the legal fee.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morals and Markets

Stakeholder Analysis