The Corporate Whistleblowers Survival Guide - Case Study Example

Introduction Pfizer is a pharmaceutical company based in New York. The company has a research base in Connecticut, Groton.The company manufactures drugs and vaccines. It is considered as one of the largest drug manufacturing company. In 2009, the company was embroiled in a legal suit with the federal and state governments. The company had marketed, by illegal means, a drug known as Bextra (Lyman 167). The illegal promotion of the drug was brought to attention by employees of the company. A person who exposes dishonesty, illegal acts and misconduct within an organization is referred to as a whistle-blower. Benefits of a Whistleblower to the society Whistle-blowing is critical to an organization and the society at large. Whistle-blowing helps in preventing corruption in both the public and private sectors. The contemporary society is characterized by widespread corruption issues such as embezzlement of public funds, organizational mismanagement, and increased bribes. In the Pfizer court case, whistle-blowers played a great role in preventing a health crisis. The whistle-blowers were in charge of sales and were supposed to make sure that the company incurred profits by all means. Usage of Bextra drug would endanger the lives of people. Not all drugs are suitable for human consumption because some are counterfeit. The drug can lead to stroke, blood clotting in the lungs and heart attack (Lyman 168); these aspects are fatal to human life. The whistle-blowers, thus, saw the need to expose the company. They helped in exposing disreputable behavior and protected the society from the effects of the drug. The whistle-blowers helped in averting an organizational and public disaster. Bextra is a drug meant to treat arthritis. The drug also acts as a painkiller for those experiencing pain during their menstrual period. The company had been licensed to administer the drug in small doses. The company, however, promoted the drug for usage in amounts that surpassed the approved amount. This was harmful to the public as it would cause serious problems in patients (Lyman 167). Cases of adverse effect of the drug would lead to damage of the company’s reputation. The whistle-blowers, thus, helped in averting a public crisis that would completely ruin or crumble the organization. The organization manufactures other helpful drugs and its crumble would affect people and medics who rely on the companies drugs. The whistleblowers, thus, help organizations to achieve perpetual growth by preventing acts that could affect company survival. Whistle-blowers help in encouraging transparency and honesty. Whistle-blowers in the Pfizer drug case helped in encouraging honesty among employees. Kopchinski, one of the whistle-blowers, saw the need to protect the lives of people. He found it necessary to be honest and transparent by bringing into light the misgivings of the drug. Transparency and honesty helped in averting health problems. Organizations that encourage whistle-blowing promote effective and transparent structures (Devine 67). Organizations that have effective structures help in serving the society and create a positive image. The society demands honesty and transparency from organization that serve it. Whistle-blowers, thus, help in creating transparency within that organization. The whistle-blower system is different from a general top down monitoring system in some ways. A top-down monitoring system refers to how an organization divides its systems to gain an insight in its integrative sub-systems. Information is, thus, shared from within the sub-systems. A whistle-blower system is different from a top-down monitoring system because it is open for all people who want to report information. Top down monitoring system is only open to people working within a sub-system. A whistle-blower system helps in safe guarding the interests of the organization or public (Arszulowicz 145). A top-down monitoring system advocates for monitoring within a sub-system. This means that the greatest initiative is to protect and safeguard interests within a subsystem. Encouraging Whistle Blowing Whistle-blowing has its own disadvantage. Whistle-blowers are often victims of retaliation. They are considered as villains by organizations and end up being blacklisted by other organizations. Encouraging whistle blowing has its own negative side effects (Secunda 99). There is, however, need to prevent fear of retaliation by employers and encourage whistle-blowing. One of the ways of preventing fear is by maintaining secrecy. Maintaining secrecy implies ensuring confidentiality of the information. Information gathered from whistle blowers should be treated as confidential. Whistle-blowers should also be shielded from the media which may expose their identity and personal life. Encouraging transparency and honesty in employees is another way that can help in preventing fear of retaliation. Employees should be encouraged that whistle-blowing helps in serving a common good. Employees should be taught the need to promote the welfare of the public. They should, thus, be ready to be honest and transparent. Organizations should promote a culture of whistle blowing among their internal and external publics. They should create policies that ban retaliations and founded on the principles of democratic contributions. Additionally, there is need to protect whistle-blowers within their organization using a variety of ways (Scott 100). This will help in preventing fear of retaliation and will encourage whistle-blowing among the stakeholders of the organization. Organizations should promote a culture that dwells on ensuring that the organization succeeds at all cost. A successful organization engages in activities that are ethical and promote the common good. This will help in encouraging whistle-blowing because people will be free to point out cases of dishonesty and corruption. Organizations should promote effective communication which is goal oriented. An effective communication should rely on whistle-blowing to control fraud, failure and misconduct within an organization. Organizations should come up with channels of communication that whistle-blowers can rely on to expose fraud, failure or misconduct. This helps in averting fear of retaliation and encourages whistle-blowing. Organizations should set counseling departments that counsel employees on whistle-blowing. Whistle-blowing can lead to stress and depression. Employees may receive threats that may stress them. They may get sacked or treated unfairly at their place of work (Devine 88). They may also ruin their chances to get employed in other places due to black listing. A counseling department helps in preparing whistle-blowers mentally and emotionally. This will help whistle-blowers confront fears that may arise out of retaliation from their activities. It will also encourage employees to be transparent and honest. Negative side effects of whistle blowing Whistle-blowers are loved and hated in equal measure. One of the side effects is legal complications. Whistle blowing leads to legal suits which are often costly. An organization embroiled in lawsuits end up paying huge amounts of money to affected persons. The Bextra legal suit affecting Pfizer has led to huge financial compensations (Lyman 167). Cost expenses, thus, is one of the side effects of encouraging whistle-blowing. Malice is another negative side effect of encouraging whistle-blower activities. Whistle-blowers may act out of malice against an organization. They may gather false evidence against an organization to ruin its reputation. Encouraging whistle-blowers activities may encourage black mailing. Whistle-blowers may gather a lot of evidence against an organization and may intend to use it against that organization. Unscrupulous whistle blowers may opt to extort an organization to gain some money or other rewards from them. They may use the evidence to get promotions. “Witch hunting” is another negative side effect of encouraging whistle blowing activities. Whistle-blowers, with personal vendettas against an organization, may try by all means to find an organization at fault (Scott, 111). They will, thus, result to all means of gathering false information against the organization. An organization’s reputation may be destroyed due to whistle blowers activities. Whistle-blowing activities bring into light bad elements within an organization (Devine 97). This may ruin an organization’s reputation. The process of establishing accuracy in the information provided by whistle blowers is at times lengthy. This means that an organization’s reputation is ruined even before conclusion of cases in court. Pfizer’s Bextra law case Pfizer a drug manufacturing company had to pay a sum of $2.3 billion to settle both criminal and civil allegations. The whistle-blowers would also receive huge amounts of money for their role in exposing the company. The result of the case was fair. The company was posing huge health problems to the public by marketing one of their drugs. They were advising usage of the drug against the required conditions. The drug can lead to heart attacks, blood clotting in the lungs and stroke (Lyman 167). These are serious health problems with adverse effects. The result of the case was, thus, fair. The whistle-blowers deserved the huge amounts of money paid to them. They saved the public from the adverse effects of the drug. They helped in serving the common good and stood for what is right. The whistle-blowers helped in making it right by providing evidence that incriminated the company (Lyman 167). The court case was also fair because it played a role in encouraging other whistle-blowers who are afraid of retaliation. The whistle-blowers in this case acted on good will to save the public from the company’s drugs. The settlement was, thus, fair as it helped in ensuring honesty and transparency. The court case and the huge financial incentives given to the whistle blowers for their activities were fair. This is because the company broke some rules from the food and drug administration by marketing usage of the drug beyond the stipulated dosage (Lyman 168). Food and drug administration sets rules and guidelines that regulate usage of medical drugs. The company is not above the law and should conform to guidelines. They, thus, deserved the outcome of the court case. The whistle-blowers also deserved the huge financial incentive because they brought into light the company’s contravention of guidelines. Conclusion Whistle-blowing activities are important to an organization. They bring into light cases of fraud, misconduct and other bad elements within an organization. Whistle-blowers help in encouraging transparency and honesty. Pfizer a drug manufacturing company was exposed by whistle blowers. The company was marketing the usage of a drug, Bextra, which had serious health problems. Whistle-blowers are often victims of retaliation. They are often considered as villains by organizations and end up being blacklisted by other industries. Organizations should promote a culture of whistle-blowing within their organization. They should create policies that ban retaliations. This will help in preventing fear of retaliation and will encourage whistle-blowing. Whistle-blowers are loved and hated in equal measure. Encouraging whistle-blowing has its own negative side effects. Pfizer was forced to pay a sum of $2.3 billion to settle both criminal and civil allegations (Lyman 167). The whistle-blowers would also receive huge amounts of money for their role in exposing the company. The result of the case was fair. The company was posing huge health problems to the public by marketing one of their drugs. Works Cited Arszulowicz, Marek. Whistle blowing: In Defense of Proper Action. New York: McGraw Hill, 2011. Print. Scott, George. Whistleblower Protection: Sustained Management Attention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print. Lyman, Michael. Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts and Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print. Secunda, Paul. Retaliation and Whistleblowers. Massachusetts: McGraw Hill, 2008. Print. Devine, Tom. The Corporate Whistleblower’s Survival Guide. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2011. Print. Read More