TY - JOUR
T1 - Building the Legitimacy of Whistleblowers: A Multi‐Case Discourse Analysis
AU - Stolowy, Herve
AU - Yves, Gendron
AU - Moll, Jodie
AU - Paugam, Luc
N1 - Funding Information:
* Accepted by Jeffrey Cohen. The authors express their gratitude to all the whistleblowers who accepted to be interviewed for this research. The authors gratefully acknowledge comments from two anonymous reviewers, Sebastian Becker, Charles Cho, Jeffrey Cohen, Danièle Eglem, Thomas Jeanjean (discussant), Eldar Maksymov, Carlos Ramirez, Stéphane Trébucq, and Michael Welker and workshop participants at HEC Montréal (Canada), ESSEC Business School (Cergy Pontoise, France), Alliance Manchester Business School (UK), EAA Annual Congress (Maastricht, the Netherlands), AFC Annual Meeting (Clermont-Ferrand, France), AAA Annual meeting (Chicago) and University of Glasgow (UK). Responsibility for the ideas expressed, or for any errors, remains entirely with the authors. Hervé Stolowy expresses his thanks to the Fondation HEC for funding the research project 4F73F1502. Hervé Stolowy also thanks the Investisse-ments d’Avenir (ANR-11-IDEX-0003/Labex Ecodec/ANR-11-LABX-0047) for supporting this research project. Luc Paugam acknowledges the financial support of the Center for Research on Society and Organizations (SnO center). Luc Paugam and Hervé Stolowy are members of the GREGHEC, CNRS Unit, UMR 2959. The authors thank Beverly Akerman for her much appreciated editorial help. The authors acknowledge the research assistance of Théo Allouch. † Corresponding author.
Publisher Copyright:
© CAAA
Copyright:
Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/8/9
Y1 - 2018/8/9
N2 - Evidence suggests that society still does not view whistleblowers as wholly legitimate—despite legal protections now offered in some jurisdictions, such as the United States. Drawing on a discourse analysis (i.e., an examination of statements), we investigate the well-publicized stories of seven whistleblowers from 69 sources, including books, first- and second-hand interviews, websites, and videos. Our focus is to examine how whistleblower discourses can build legitimacy by more tightly defining the whistleblower role and demonstrating its alignment with social norms. Using whistleblower self-narratives, we identify four narrative patterns: (i) Trigger(s)—the event(s) leading to whistleblowing; (ii) Personality traits—whistleblower's morality, resourcefulness, and determination; (iii) Constraints—barriers requiring regulatory and organizational change; and (iv) Consequences—the longer term positive impact of the whistleblowing act. These patterns rely on symbolic, analogical, and metaphorical framing to allow others to better understand the role of whistleblowers and enlist their support. Exploring a data set of 1,621 press articles, we find indications that these narrative patterns resonate in the media—which provide a form of support and may be instrumental in legitimizing the whistleblower role. Grounded on these results, we develop a legitimacy construction model of the whistleblower role, that is, a representation of how role legitimacy is produced and sustained. From this model, we identify a number of important areas for future research.
AB - Evidence suggests that society still does not view whistleblowers as wholly legitimate—despite legal protections now offered in some jurisdictions, such as the United States. Drawing on a discourse analysis (i.e., an examination of statements), we investigate the well-publicized stories of seven whistleblowers from 69 sources, including books, first- and second-hand interviews, websites, and videos. Our focus is to examine how whistleblower discourses can build legitimacy by more tightly defining the whistleblower role and demonstrating its alignment with social norms. Using whistleblower self-narratives, we identify four narrative patterns: (i) Trigger(s)—the event(s) leading to whistleblowing; (ii) Personality traits—whistleblower's morality, resourcefulness, and determination; (iii) Constraints—barriers requiring regulatory and organizational change; and (iv) Consequences—the longer term positive impact of the whistleblowing act. These patterns rely on symbolic, analogical, and metaphorical framing to allow others to better understand the role of whistleblowers and enlist their support. Exploring a data set of 1,621 press articles, we find indications that these narrative patterns resonate in the media—which provide a form of support and may be instrumental in legitimizing the whistleblower role. Grounded on these results, we develop a legitimacy construction model of the whistleblower role, that is, a representation of how role legitimacy is produced and sustained. From this model, we identify a number of important areas for future research.
U2 - 10.1111/1911-3846.12453
DO - 10.1111/1911-3846.12453
M3 - Article
SN - 0823-9150
VL - 36
SP - 7
EP - 49
JO - Contemporary Accounting Research
JF - Contemporary Accounting Research
IS - 1
ER -