Pathways to Protection: An Organization-Centered Approach to Whistleblowing Law

Robert C. Bird - University of Connecticut School of Business
Jennifer M. Pacella - Indiana University Kelley School of Business
Vol. 59
April 2026
Page 2479

Whistleblowing has swept not only the nation, but the world, in bringing otherwise unknown information pertaining to wrongdoing to the forefront. Whistleblowers have been crucial in everything from thwarting dangerous and even deadly exposure to pharmaceuticals and factory emissions to revealing widespread corruption among government officials and business leaders in various industries. Despite all of their contributions, however, whistleblowers are still too often devalued, ignored, or subject to retaliation. In this Article, we transcend the identification of weaknesses in whistleblower legislation that has largely dominated legal scholarship to date as the cause of the problem. Rather, we apply a theory comprised of five novel pathways illustrating how legal mandates can be a source of competitive advantage for organizations, in a way no prior research previously has, to propose that the critical focus for whistleblowing reform should be the organization itself. Our approach posits that organizations, not courts, have the greatest power to fundamentally transform what has historically made comprehensive whistleblower protections impossible by promoting self-regulation, filling in gaps among the various, fragmented whistleblower laws, better managing complicit whistleblowers, and encouraging the perception of whistleblowers as a source of value. As such, the perspective and analysis that we propose herein has the potential to significantly improve some of the most common and prevalent problems associated with whistleblower legal protections today.

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