Whistleblowing
Ingvar Bratt, hjälte eller förrädare?
KonsekvensetikWhistleblowingPliktetikDygdetikBrattIngvarPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapLaw and Political Science
An employee that informs on illegal or unethical behavior in the workplace is what has been called a whistleblower. Employees that have become whistleblowers have often faced tragic consequences, like threats from the organization, unemployment, bankruptcy and divorce. The purpose of this paper is, on the basis of different ethical perspectives to describe the justification of the whistleblowing phenomenon and apply this to the Swedish whistleblower Ingvar Bratt who ?blew the whistle? when he found out that Bofors AB, the company he worked for, were smuggling arms to the countries Dubai and Bahrein. The method that has been used in this paper is what Björn Badersten call a normative ?givet att?- analysis. By using this method you can reach different conclusions about the same question depending on which preferences you use. In this paper the preferences on which I draw my conclusions about Ingvar Bratt are the three ethical perspectives consequentialism, deontological and virtue ethics.