Joyce Rothschild

Whistle-Blower Disclosures and Management Retaliation: The Battle to Control Information about Organization Corruption

Based on nationwide data the authors collected on whistle-blowers and on silent observers, this article reports, that (a) whistle-blowing is more frequent in the public sector than in the private; (b) there are almost no sociodemographic characteristics that distinguish the whistle-blower from the silent observer; (c) whistle-blowers suffer severe retaliation from management, especially when their information proves significant; and (d) no special method of disclosure or personal characteristics can insulate the whistle-blower from such retaliation. Furthermore, the authors found that retaliation was most certain and severe when the reported misconduct was systematic and significant—when the practices exposed were part of the regular, profit accumulation process of the organization. The authors conclude from their interviews that the journey to exoneration that follows a whistle-blowers disclosures often alters the whistle-blowers identity, leading them to see themselves as people who resist hurtful or criminal conduct in the workplace.

The cooperative workplace : potentials and dilemmas of organizational democracy and participation

Introduction Part I. Origins and Types of Alternative Organizations: 1. Cooperatives in the late twentieth-century: the democratic impulse and the challenge of oligarchy 2. The organizations studied, the methods used Part II. A Theory of Democratic organization: 3. The collectivist organization: an alternative to bureaucratic models 4. Internal conditions that facilitate collectivist-democratic organizations 5. External conditions that facilitate collectivist-democratic organizations Part III. The Significance of Democratic Organizations: 6. Democracy and individual satisfaction 7. The future of cooperation 8. Overview and conclusions Notes References Index.

Creating a Just and Democratic Workplace: More Engagement, Less Hierarchy

JOYCE ROTHSCHILD Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University sons to support my deontological universalist position. At the same time, there are in addition important cultural differences in the values a particular society upholds, reflecting a tradition restructured via megalogues as well as dissemination from other cultures. However, I do not draw on such values in this essay. Relativism is the curse of a good society, because when driven to its logical conclusion it in effect says that if you believe in concentration camps, gulags, ethnic cleansing, sex slaves, homophobia, sexism, racism, or whatever that is your good society; I have my own definition of mine. To be able to conduct a moral discourse, which the very concept of a good society entails, we require a foundation that is postrelativistic, as even diehard relativists increasingly recognize. In effect, when we learn about the behavior of other communities, and they of ours, we do not refrain from passing moral judgment. The only difference is that if we refuse to recognize cross-cultural criteria, such judgments are either arbitrary or unaccounted for. I urge that we make such judgments and submit to them, but openly recognize their foundations, and where they are obscure, work to uncover them through cross-cultural megalogues. In effect, they have already been initiated on issues such as the treatment of ethnic and racial minorities, women and children, the environment, and numerous other issues from land mines to whales. Sociologists can do much to enrich and advance these megalogues, as long as they overcome obsolescent views of cultural relativism or scientific objectivism.

The Fate of Whistleblowers in Nonprofit Organizations

What has come to be called ‘whistleblowing’ has grown enormously in the US over recent decades and it is spreading rapidly around the world. The research on which this paper is based develops a sample of whistleblowers from all walks of life and all regions of the US. This article focuses specifically on the treatment of whistleblowers in the non-profit sector. In examining the political meaning of the act of whistleblowing, the author describes whistleblowing as an act of parrhesia. In ancient Greece this was a citizen request to speak freely and frankly. In the case of the whistleblowers, they are moved to speak publicly and candidly, even without permission to do so, in defense of the substantive purposes of the organization that employs them. This study finds that there is little difference in how whistleblowers are treated in the three sectors of our economy. In the majority of cases in this sample, the organizational managers against whom the whistleblowers level claims of wrongdoing, seek quickly to discredit, defame and terminate them. The author’s research does find that most employees in non-profit organizations view their employer as reasonably open to their inputs. Nevertheless, these positive perceptions of the employer are destroyed among those employees who witness what they define as wrongful or illegal conduct on the part of their employer, and particularly where the employee brings their observations of corruption to “higher-ups” in the organization and sees no corrective action take place. The retaliation that too often follows their disclosures of corrupt practices leaves them with a magnified sense of their own integrity, a new political identity, and an indelible sense of distrust toward senior managers and hierarchal organizations in general. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how non-profit organizations could respond in a more constructive way to dissenting viewpoints.

Avoid, Talk, or Fight: Alternative Cultural Strategies in the Battle Against Oligarchy in Collectivist-Democratic Organizations

As Rund Koopmans has argued (1995) and as Carole Pateman (1970) argued in her theory classic of three decades ago, Participation and Democratic Theory, the actual face-to-face deliberation and debate that goes on in directly democratic groups may be the best way, maybe even the only way, to develop in people the capacity for democracy and self-governance. To date, we do not have a convincing, empirically based, answer to this question. Leach (2005) however, has recently found that, over the last quarter century, literally hundreds of thousands of people in the German social movement sector have been exposed to collectivist-democratic practices and a significant number of these people have come to expect consensus-based decision-making and collectivist-democratic practices in much of their community life. Are the sensibilities and capacities developed in these voluntary, social movement organizations in the modern Germany having a visibly democratizing effect on the nation as a whole? Could they, if these collectivist organizations were to spread in the United States or anywhere else in the world, be the path to reinvigorating democracy? These are important questions for examination.

Managers' Conduct and Workers' Dignity: Making the Sociological Link

Randy Hodson reminds us in this insightful book that what is really central to workers in all occupations, professions, and trades, is that they receive a sense of dignity in their work and that earned dignity comes from contributing creatively to the quality of the product or efficiency of the work process at hand and from being acknowledged and appreciated for that contribution. Respect and dignity, however, are not easily obtained, and as Hodson shows, much of what work is about is the struggle to achieve these. The primary contribution of Hodsons work lies in his argument and demonstration that the key impediment to employees getting a sense of dignity from their work lies in management, or I should say, mismanagement. Mismanagement can take many forms, from outright abuse on the part of managers to managerial efforts to squeeze more out of employees by overworking them. It includes incompetent managers who fail to establish standards of excellence or quality in the product, and who even fail to organize production effectively. Their confusion or lack of performance standards means that they are open to the ingratiation attempts of subordinates, that they play favorites, and that they fail to acknowledge quality work when it is done. Incompetent management also includes the power-hungry managers who cannot or will not relinquish any parcel of control, even where greater worker voice and autonomy would improve the work product. One of the strengths of Dignity at Work is that Hodson shows how all of these forms of management incompetence and abuse rob employees of their capacity to do good work and thereby undermine the pride that workers take, and want to take, in their work.

Creating Participatory Democratic Decision-Making in Local Organizations

Organizations at the local level that seek to resist hierarchy and conduct themselves along participatory democratic lines appeared so radical in the 1970s that they were called “alternative institutions”. They were born in social movements that wanted to create a more egalitarian, just and democratic society. In the last couple of decades, their model of inclusive decision-making has spread by the thousands into the non-profit sector, the public sector and even the for-profit sector. Indeed, it has become almost ubiquitous and a whole industry of consultants has developed to facilitate organizations’ efforts to develop more inclusive, participatory and empowering decisional processes. This paper seeks to explain how participatory democratic decision-making norms and practices have evolved over these decades, and in so doing, it identifies nine foundational elements of participatory democratic decisional processes and contrasts these characteristics with the processes used in representative democratic systems of decision-making, along these nine dimensions. Next, this paper examines four examples of participatory democratic organizations in action, each drawn from the recent research literature—a food cooperative, certain self-help groups, a Quaker meeting and some public organizations led by professional consultants seeking to advance voice and democratic participation in decision-making. From this investigation, it is evident that participatory and deliberative practices of decision-making can vary enormously between groups that share these goals. Nevertheless, these examples show that these efforts to guarantee voice to all members of the group can succeed in reconciling individual differences of views that may have existed, are generally very satisfying to the people involved, and, most importantly, may be essential for personal transformation to take place. Further, the author shows that these emergent “Democracy 2.0 standards” for decision-making, as she calls them, are not just about the right of members to share thoughts and experiences on an equal footing; they also pre-suppose an obligation on the part of the group to consider, deliberate and seek consensus. Thereby, these newer participatory decisional processes are catalyzing in participants not only greater capacity to speak, but also greater capacity to listen. When we turn our attention to group process characteristics that can give rise to personal growth, a feeling of connection with others and a sense of belonging to an enduring community, then we come to understand why so many people in recent decades have chosen to build or get involved in local organizations that offer equal and ample voice to all who would be affected by the decision at hand and where listening, consideration and consensus-seeking are the organizational practice.