
A model of the chemical structure of Rofecoxib, the active ingredient of Vioxx. At a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing on November 18, 2004, Dr. David Graham, a safety scientist for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, testified that the agency's handling of Merck &
Co Inc.'s withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, was a "profound regulatory failure" by an agency "incapable of protecting America" from another dangerous drug. Shortly thereafter, as reported by Marc Kaufman in The Washington Post, the nonprofit Government Accountability Project (GAP), which assists whistleblowers, started receiving anonymous telephone calls discrediting Dr. Graham and his work. With a little sleuthing, the GAP staff members were able to determine that the calls were coming from Dr. Graham's FDA managers. This incident is an example of a professional attack that failed. Many succeed. Image (CC by SA 3.0) by Tarique012.
If you work in an organization that has transgressed in a serious way, you might be considering whether or not to make information available to the public, the media, or to government authorities. If you continue to work there, and you have knowledge of violations, you might be involving yourself in illegal behavior, or at the very least, violating your own moral code. Sorting through these questions is much easier if you have professional support from an attorney, a counselor, or a therapist.
As difficult as these issues are, there are other matters to consider. Specifically, if you do "blow the whistle," how will your employer respond? How will your fellow employees respond?
There are obvious responses, including denials, personal attacks, reassignment, harassment, vandalism, termination, blackmail, extortion, and even brutality. Famous cases of whistleblowers are littered with these obvious measures. Here's Part I of a little catalog of some less-obvious tactics for which it's more difficult to prepare oneself.
- Other whistleblowers
- People in these situations tend not to consider the possibility that someone else has already blown the whistle, or is about to. If that happens to you, then you might already have been targeted for investigation; you might already be regarded as a co-conspirator.
- Perform an inventory of people you know who have information that could incriminate you. Assess the likelihood that someone is already conferring with authorities. If you sense that you're vulnerable, seek counsel and act quickly. If you think you still have some time, estimate how much time you have and get busy preparing material to use if you do contact authorities. Even if you act too late, a freshly prepared store of material could lend credibility to your claim that you were intending to act.
- Professional attacks
- If the whistleblowerProspective whistleblowers tend not
to consider the possibility that
someone else has already blown
the whistle, or is about to or prospective whistleblower is in a technical or specialized job, questions about the work products of the whistleblower are generally technical. For this reason, direct professional attacks of the obvious type might be effective, but evaluating them is difficult for people outside the profession. A more effective family of tactics involves degrading the whistleblower's own work products, so as to cause colleagues to discredit the whistleblower professionally. Direct tampering is possible, but so is tampering with data, devices, or the quality of materials upon which the whistleblower's own work depends. - If you suddenly detect irregularities in your own work products, or in the resources on which your work products depend, reporting them through formal, regular channels might not be wise, because it signals the tamperers that you're aware of what they've done. Instead, consider enhancing security protecting your work, or creating a duplicate and far more secure version of your work, while allowing the tamperers to continue their operations on a false, less-secure version.
We'll continue next time, exploring more tactics that can erode whistleblower credibility. Next issue in this series
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Changing the Subject: II
- Sometimes, in conversation, we must change the subject, but we also do it to dominate, manipulate, or
assert power. Subject changing — and controlling its use — can be important political skills.
Why There Are Pet Projects
- Pet projects are common in organizations, including organizations with healthy and mature planning processes.
They usually consume resources at levels beyond what the organization intends, which raises the question
of their genesis: Where do pet projects come from?
Mitigating Risk Resistance Risk
- Project managers are responsible for managing risks, but they're often stymied by insufficient resources.
Here's a proposal for making risk management more effective at an organizational scale.
Yet More Obstacles to Finding the Reasons Why
- Part III of our catalog of obstacles encountered in retrospectives, when we try to uncover why we succeeded
— or failed.
Three Levels of Deception at Work
- Deception in workplace politics is probably less common than many believe. Still, being ensnared in
a deception can be a costly and upsetting experience. A valuable skill is recognizing the three types
of deceptions: strategic, operational, and tactical.
See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group