Wim Vandekerckhove

That's Not What Happened and it's Not My Fault Anyway! An Exploration of Management Attitudes Towards SRI-Shareholder Engagement

This paper explores semi-formal interactions between SRI-investors that take the governance route rather than deploy a best-in-class logic or exclusionary screening. On the basis of a stakeholder typology of the investor and of the chosen topic of interaction, namely compliance with the core ILO labor conventions, the paper formulates 10 expectations about management reactions to the concerns raised by investors. These expectations cover responsiveness, acknowledgment of positions and general attitude. The expectations are then related to the factual discourse by management responding to such concerns raised by investors. Based on data obtained from the Portfolio21-correspondence, which is a joint initiative of European investors, it is found that management is very willing to discuss cases but at the same time denies the truth-value of the allegations. Here, the problem of information asymmetry comes to the fore.

Managerial responsiveness to whistleblowing: Expanding the research horizon

This chapter addresses how research into whistleblowing may need to evolve if it is to inform new priorities in management, regulation and public policy. It becomes crucial that more insight is gained into how the management processes of organizations and whistleblowing interact and interrelate – not simply in bad ways or with bad outcomes for whistleblowers, but across the spectrum. After all, research in different advanced democracies suggests that in these contexts, 50 per cent or more of internally voiced concerns are successful in having wrongdoing addressed or corporate practices changed; and that retaliation against whistleblowers is not as ubiquitous as generally assumed (see Smith, Chapter 10; also Smith and Brown 2008; Skivenes and Trygstad 2010b; Bjorkelo et al. 2010). Different success rates between organizations, industry sectors and legal regimes make it possible to begin cracking the code of what makes internal and regulatory whistleblowing successful in some cases, but not others.

Responsible investment in times of turmoil

* Scrutinises and reflects on SRI in the context of the current financial crisis * Critically assesses different understandings of SRI as they play out in the market * Tackles epistemological, ethical and policy problems, which arise as mainstreaming SRI faces financial meltdowns The SRI phenomenon is said to be entering the mainstream of financial intermediation. From a fairly marginal practice promoted or campaigned for by NGO’s and at odds with financial practice and orthodoxy it grew into well formulated policy adopted by a wide range of investors. Academic literature on SRI has also boomed on the assumption that mainstreaming is taking place. However, little thinking has been carried out on questions specifically arising from this alleged ‘mainstreaming’. This book, addressed to those with a scholarly or practitioner’s interest in SRI, starts filling this neglected dimension. Today, one cannot ignore the difficulties of main stream financing. The financial spheres are trembling globally in one of the worst crises since the 1930’s. As a response to the crisis, the intermediation of ‘financial responsibility’ will undoubtedly be the subject of new regulation and scrutinizing. This book looks into what these turbulences will imply for SRI. In view of these circumstances, one might or even should, ask oneself whether the phenomenon was not an empty fad during the exuberant high of financial euphoria that came abruptly to an end with current financial crises. To put it rather sec: are financial intermediaries that promote ‘sustainability’ credible, while it is obvious that some developments in financial intermediation -predictably, as some say- were unsustainable? Is this an opportunity for enhancing SRI because of the strength and superiority it has developed or will it disappear due to a return to financial myopia? This book is the first to question the future of SRI in such a radical way.

Understandings of whistleblowing: Dilemmas of societal culture

In this chapter, we demonstrate that for cross-cultural research into whistleblowing to date, this has proved a substantial challenge. So far, while the research record is important, it is relatively shallow. Overall, we argue it is time to develop a revised model (or models) for investigating and comparing how whistleblowing manifests in different societies, and the implications of cultural difference for how it is understood and managed. In the next section we sketch some of the basic implications of how concepts of whistleblowing have developed, followed by a basic overview of how the study of culture has interfaced with whistleblowing research to date – chiefly through the model of culture’s influences on organizational life developed by Hofstede (1980, 1991, 2002). In the third section we review the empirical record of this research since it began in the early 1990s, and which, despite the dominance of Hofstede’s model, gives very mixed results. The fourth section then highlights some further limitations of the research based on that model. We review other research raising questions about the model and present findings from our own research on the acceptability of whistleblowing in the United Kingdom and Australia, illustrating the limited explanatory (and even predictive) power of Hofstede’s model. In the fifth section, we discuss what kind of adapted or alternative research model might provide greater cross-cultural insights into whistleblowing. In particular, we suggest further examination of Schwartz’s approach (Schwartz 1994, Schwartz and Bardi 2001) as a possible research perspective, one that would allow for cultural shift and universals. The final, section discusses some key practical and methodological problems faced by researchers who wish to research whistleblowing cross-culturally, before conclusions are drawn.

European Whistleblower Protection: Tiers or Tears?

This paper offers an assessment of whistleblower protection in Europe. All 27 countries of the European Union are included except for the UK, which is discussed in McMullen’s chapter in this book. Switzerland, although not a member of the European Union, is also included, and the position of the whistleblower within the European Institutions is also discussed. The assessment is made against a “3-tiered model” derived from the UK PIDA. Although the sole stated purpose of the UK PIDA is to protect the whistleblower, I argue that the successive recipient tiers make previous tiers accountable for investigating and dealing with suspected wrongdoing, thereby serving other purposes than mere protection.

Accountability discourses in advanced capitalism: who is now accountable to whom?

Purpose – This paper aims to argue that the concept of “accountability” has changed and become perverted. Originally the concept meant answerability or the act of rendering an account. Those who were traditionally accountable were the powerful in organisations, public institutions and international bodies. The paper seeks point out that the notion of “accountability” has largely been emptied of its substance, as over the past few decades the concept of accountability has become perverted in discourse and in practice. The powerful are often no longer held accountable and are able to make those to whom they have hitherto been accountable, accountable to them instead.Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is developed at the micro, meso and macro levels, through an analysis of the academic literature, in particular journals dealing with the interface between accounting and organisation studies.Findings – It was found that what happens at the micro and meso levels becomes comprehensible when put into the ...

The Relationship between Transparency, Whistleblowing, and Public Trust

This chapter uses empirical evidence of public attitudes toward a specific type of transparency reform – facilitation and protection of ‘whistleblowing’ – to seek out a more complete picture of the role of transparency in sustaining trust.

Dear Sir, we are not an NGO

With the financial crisis, socially responsible investment (SRI) has gained attention. SRI designates a variety of rationales and techniques for including non-financial criteria into investment decisions. One technique of SRI consists of investors engaging with investee corporations on issues of concern. The aim is twofold. First, the investor hopes to get more information on corporate policies and practices with regard to allegations of improper behaviour, made by third parties (NGOs, unions, press). Second, the investor tries to influence these practices by signalling investor concern to top management over certain issues. However, the engagement process itself remains opaque, especially in Europe where shareholder activism (SRI activists voting at AGM) is relatively unknown, and where ‘soft engagement’ (behind-closed-doors-dialogue) is more popular. This article takes an organizational rhetoric approach to provide insights into the complexities and ambiguities that are at play in the interaction between representatives of SRI investors and corporations. We use data from an investor engagement process (letters to and from management and boards of investee corporations) on three cases of corporate activities in Myanmar. Our findings are that the investor initiative has a hard time getting investees to answer a number of straightforward questions about the investees risk exposure and risk management with regard to being involved in breaches of International Labour Organization core conventions. From our organizational rhetoric analysis we offer plausible explanations for this both on investor side (ambiguity of intent, lack of credibility on investor side) and on corporate side (ambiguity of audience to respond to, lack of engagement experience, the assumption that moral arguments are expected rather than proper risk management).

Strategic issues in whistleblowing research

Previous research successfully put whistleblowing on the public and political agenda and removed some common misconceptions about who whistleblowers are and why they choose to raise their concerns. The next generation of research is expected to turn its attention further away from trying to profile the whistleblower to focusing on the wrongdoing, what works and does not work in terms of whistleblowing policies and procedures, and the contexts in which these are implemented. Hence, the strategy is to engage in pragmatic as well as fundamental research, supporting conceptual, empirical and policy work that can promote safer and more effective whistleblowing. This can be achieved by bringing about a common understanding about specific aspects of whistleblowing among the various stakeholders, such as advice givers, support providers, investigators, judges, managers and policy makers. Accordingly, the chapters in the Handbook offer contributions towards that next generation research on four dimensions which are important to recognize, if whistleblowing research is to evolve in the more coherent, useful and even powerful ways that we envisage. These dimensions, which we consider in turn, involve: new conceptual delineations, new theoretical developments, new research methods, and new departures for policy and practice.

Cosmopolitan Corporate Responsibilities

Despite a wide consensus among cosmopolitan thinkers that multinational corporations (MNCs) have a tremendous impact on people’s lives all over the world, corporations receive little attention from these thinkers when it comes to developing “cures” for many of the global worries they regard those corporations to be contributors to. This chapter starts to fill that void. Following Andrew Kuper’s three tasks in distributing responsibilities, I first establish the grounds for allocating responsibilities through Carol Gould ’s social ontological approach in which duties exist prior to rights and result from the claims each makes on others. I argue that claims people make on corporations are cosmopolitan in the sense that they are human aspirations of self-transformation beyond determinations of nationality, ethnicity, gender, place of birth, etc. I then attribute cosmopolitan responsibilities to corporations using a four-dimensional model of the spectrum of economic activity in which the dimensions are differentiated by type of actors with whom corporations – as business organizations rather than ersatz-governments – have relationships. Finally, I contend that convincing corporate agents to fulfill their responsibilities can be pursued through the Habermasian notion of “performative contradiction” or Thomas Risse’s “argumentative self-entrapment”.