ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an ethical assessment of the whistle blowing policies developing or recently developed. Such an ethical assessment consists of comparing possibilities and necessities. The normative legitimation of whistle blowing policies is attempts to give meaning to those relations. This meaning-giving is lingual. The normative legitimation is done through words-with-meaning'. Niklas Luhmann looks at the meaning-giving structure in relation to a social history and calls this a semantic. It is a lingual, and thus a cognitive whole of meaning and signification, within the framework of a historical process of social differentiation. The chapter looks to develop a work plan by rephrasing Luhmann's view, inspired by aspects of the work of Max Weber, Michel Foucault and Alain Touraine. Max Weber's distinction between the normative and the empirical is the crux of his Verstehende Soziologie. He just as Luhmann later approaches experience and action from meaning-giving and signification.
