Masters Degrees (Philosophy)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Philosophy) by Author "Andrade, Julio Anthony"

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    From pariah to parrhesiastes : reconceptualising the whistleblower in a complex world
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011-12) Andrade, Julio Anthony; Woermann, Minka; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis commences with an exploration of the ethics of whistleblowing as traditionally understood, describing the ethical dilemma at its centre: remaining loyal to one's organisation, against alerting society to organisational wrongdoing that threatens its welfare. The positions on several problematic issues in the literature, such as dissent, organisational retaliation, whistleblower motive, and mandatory whistleblowing will be presented and evaluated. The key internal/external disclosure dichotomy within whistleblowing will also be critically examined. The purported solutions to these issues, as well as whistleblowing's central dilemma, will be shown to remain unsatisfactory. This will be attributed to the adoption of an Enlightenment rules-based approach to ethics in general, which underpins and informs the ethics of whistleblowing in particular. An Enlightenment rules-based approach seeks to posit universal and immutable ethical standards that transcend context. As corrective to the above failings, the ethics of whistleblowing will be investigated from the view that seeks to understand whistleblowing as a historically determined and culturally mediated social practice. Within the contexts of the USA and South Africa it will be demonstrated that key whistleblowing issues (and even the central whistleblowing dilemma of divided loyalties) cannot be cast in immutable and universal terms, and are influenced by the contingencies that accompany them. An attempt will then be made to understand whistleblowing in the context of the globalisation of the last thirty years, which will prove more difficult. This will be undertaken through an analysis of Vandekerckhove's project, which seeks to place the normative legitimisations of whistleblowing legislation and organisational whistleblowing policies within a globalisation semantic able to contain the conflict between society and the organisation. This will be shown as ill-conceived because of Vandekerckhove's particular understanding of the organisation as an operationally closed system. Moving the argument forward will be undertaken at the hand of Critical Complexity theory which attempts to make the case for understanding the organisation as an open system. This will allow us to recast corporate responsibility as relational responsiveness to a particular stakeholder, which in turn will allow flexibility in terms of who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing. Consequently the internal/external disclosure dichotomy will be proved unsustainable. Further opening up the organisation will render the boundary with society meaningless, as it will be shown that the identity of society and organisation are inextricably tied together. As such, the notion of society versus the organisation will disappear, and whistleblowing will be reconceptualised as loyalty to both society and the organisation simultaneously, thus rendering the central dilemma of whistleblowing obsolete.