The Content of Whistleblowing Procedures: A Critical Review of Recent Official Guidelines

30 Pages Posted: 11 Jun 2011 Last revised: 30 Jun 2011

See all articles by Wim Vandekerckhove

Wim Vandekerckhove

EDHEC Business School

David Lewis

Middlesex University - Business School

Date Written: March 8, 2011

Abstract

There is an increasing recognition of the need to provide ways for people to raise concerns about suspected wrongdoing by promoting internal policies and procedures which offer proper safeguards to actual and potential whistleblowers. Many organisations in both the public and private sectors now have such measures and these display a wide variety of operating modalities: in-house or outsourced, anonymous/confidential/ identified, multi or single tiered, specified or open subject matter etc. As a result of this development, a number of guidelines and policy documents have been produced by authoritative bodies. This article reviews the following five documents from a management perspective, the first two deal with the principles upon which legislation might be based and the others describing good management practice: the Council of Europe Resolution 1729 (COER); Transparency International ‘Recommended Principles for Whistleblowing Legislation’ (TI); European Union Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Opinion (EUWP); International Chamber of Commerce ‘Guidelines on Whistleblowing’ (ICC); and the British Standards Institute ‘Whistleblowing arrangements Code of Practice 2008 (BSI).

Keywords: whistleblowing, whistle-blowing, governance, business ethics

JEL Classification: J53, J59, M12, M14

Suggested Citation

Vandekerckhove, Wim and Lewis, David, The Content of Whistleblowing Procedures: A Critical Review of Recent Official Guidelines (March 8, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1860393 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1860393

Wim Vandekerckhove (Contact Author)

EDHEC Business School ( email )

58 rue du Port
Lille, 59046
France

David Lewis

Middlesex University - Business School ( email )

The Burroughs
London, NW4 4BT
United Kingdom

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