ABSTRACT
Whistleblowing is a communicative genre of truth-telling, a social action that speaks a truth about organizational wrongdoing. The literature approaches whistleblowing variously—as a public mode of organizational dissent; as a modern version of the classical mode of parrhesiastic speech, speaking fearlessly and frankly to those in power; as a problem of organizational ethics and free speech; and as a problem of wrongful termination in need of legal redress. This chapter links whistleblowing as parrhesia, with its constitutive elements—truth, frankness, criticism, danger, courage, duty, and freedom—to the promise of a democracy that can hold organizations responsible for their wrongdoing. Whistleblowing as a kind of parrhesia offers insight into how individuals negotiate asymmetrical relationships of power to make public organizational wrongdoing. The public character of whistleblowing is potentially a mechanism by which whistleblowing transforms itself from a micro-act of resistance into a potentially collective act of change made legitimate by the democratic power of speech.
