Abstract
Whistleblowing research has progressed considerably over the past decade. One area that has not progressed in the same way is the theorisation of the organisations within which whistleblowing takes place. The survey-based whistleblowing literature tends to ignore questions about the nature of organisations, while much other writing on whistleblowing repeats the simple dichotomy between whistleblowers as ‘ethical resisters’ and organisations as ‘bureaucratic hierarchy’ that became prominent in the 1970s. This paper identifies some of the problems with this typical way of thinking about organisations and whistleblowing. It challenges the view that bureaucracy in itself is particularly inimical to whistleblowing. Bureaucratic hierarchy presents opportunities as well as problems for effective whistleblowing. The paper also challenges the assumption that, because bureaucracy presents problems for whistleblowing, alternative participative forms of organization must be the solution. Application of Mary Douglas’s grid-group theory suggests that all forms of organisation have the potential to produce mixed results for whistleblowers.
Keywords: whistleblowing, bureaucracy, hierarchy, integrity, grid-group theory