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Skivenes, Marit; Trygstad, Sissel --- "Loyalty and Whistleblowing in Norway: How Roles Come into Play" [2010] ELECD 547; in Lewis, B. David (ed), "A Global Approach to Public Interest Disclosure" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: A Global Approach to Public Interest Disclosure

Editor(s): Lewis, B. David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848448995

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Loyalty and Whistleblowing in Norway: How Roles Come into Play

Author(s): Skivenes, Marit; Trygstad, Sissel

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

7. Loyalty and whistleblowing in
Norway: how roles come into play
Dr Marit Skivenes and Dr Sissel Trygstad

INTRODUCTION

Studies of employees in Norway show that they have reported to a great
extent what they characterize as serious wrongdoing at their workplace.
About eight out of ten employees blow the whistle on their observations,
that is, report them to someone that can do something about the situa-
tion1 (Norwegian Statistics, 2006; Skivenes and Trygstad, 2007; cf. Miceli
and Near's 2002 definition of whistleblowing). One important reason for
the high rate of reporting could be that Norwegian employees experience
themselves as empowered and autonomous in the sense that they have
high job security, different channels for `voice' inside the organization,
and the State's arrangements that provide extensive welfare services for
all unemployed in particular and for all citizens in general (Skivenes and
Trygstad, forthcoming). Empowered and autonomous employees might
present challenges to employers and companies, as employees can be
disloyal, misuse their power, create mistrust at the workplace and have
aims other than those that the organization wants to achieve. This chapter
sheds light on these challenges by addressing loyalty obligations: should
employees be loyal to their employer, to professional standards, to service
users, to their co-workers, to their local community, to their own moral
standards or to their own self-interests? More significantly, can employees
handle conflicting loyalties and how do they do so? Our aim is to shed light
on the loyalty dilemmas that employees might ...