ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book is valuable to anyone seeking a more well-rounded appreciation of a very particular and dramatic form of organizational/rhetorical narrative. It explores the following four intriguing questions: How, rhetorically, do publics define and manage the concept of whistleblowing? How does this process shift over time as cultural norms and expectations change? How can the whistleblowing process be understood as a multidimensional, shifting matrix of dialectic tensions? and How does whistleblowing hold potential for engaged research and practice in organizational and “paracorporate communication”? The book discusses the dialectic tension resulting in the use of “legal” vs. “scholarly” definitions of whistleblowing. It identifies several likely subjects: fear of retaliation, beliefs of inaction, difficulty in assessing the wrongdoing, and lacking trusted confidants.
