Their clear importance for society notwithstanding, whistleblowers can often find themselves the target of retaliation within their organizations. ‘Whistleblower retaliation’ is an organizing concept in the literature that encompasses research on the methods by which whistleblowers are punished for disclosures. Types of retaliation can range from job loss to demotion, and decreased quality of working conditions (Dworkin and Baucus
1998; Ethics Resource Centre
2012; Lennane
1996/2012; Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran
2005; Rothschild and Miethe
1999; Vandekerckhove et al.
2014; Vandekerckhove and Tsahuridu
2010). A key area that remains under-researched involves theoretical developments that capture the complexity of power as it operates in situations of whistleblower retaliation. Thus far, studies have tended to adopt a ‘resource-based’ approach to this issue inspired by Pfeffer (Miceli and Near
1994; Near and Miceli
1985,
1986; Rehg et al.
2008). This sees power as a zero-sum entity, something that an organizational actor either possesses or does not. While useful, such theorization represents a somewhat limited view of power in the context of whistleblowing that requires further development in order to account for the complexity of the process of whistleblowing including retaliation (McLain and Keenan
1999; Vandekerckhove et al.
2014). In particular, these theories would benefit from considering in more depth the ways in which power can operate through diffuse networks of discourse and normative exclusions. Organizations utilize different forms of power to discipline individuals who they see as transgressors of norms of silence, while whistleblowers attempt to resist these (Premeaux and Bedeian
2003)—and yet conceptual understandings remain limited. This is because extant theories disregard the psychosocial dynamics of power flows as these occur in organizations. Specifically, there is no attention paid to how the wrongdoing organizations deploy various discourses including that of mental health, to undermine the claims of whistleblowers who often internalize and enact these. In this article, we contribute to research on this important issue by drawing on Judith Butler’s ‘recognition-based critique’ of subjectivity and power, a growing area of interest in organization studies (Riach et al.
2014, p. 1679; see also Borgerson
2005; Harding et al.
2014; Kenny
2010,
2017; Riach et al.
2016; Tyler and Cohen
2008). This view builds on the resource-based approach because it sees power as inherent to the very formation of the subject, as she constructs a sense of self through identification with discourse, rather than simply an entity that is either possessed or not. Thus, power is both complex and multiple, circulating between the person being retaliated against and the organizational representatives involved, and this enriches our understanding of power in the scene of whistleblower retaliation.
We draw our inspiration from theories of subject formation from poststructuralist and psychoanalytic thought, to conceptualize deployments of the mental health discourse in whistleblowing as normative violence. Normative violence is a term describing the violence inherent to the operation of discursive categories, relating both to the formation of subjectivity and also to the facilitation of more overt ‘typical’ forms of violence (Butler
1990; Chambers
2007). We see retaliation against whistleblowers as involving both kinds. To understand people’s experiences of whistleblowing, we conducted an in-depth empirical study of people who spoke out in diverse sectors and country contexts. Using a variety of methods including interviews, feedback workshops and document analysis we explored individuals’ interpretations of their experiences, which we analyzed alongside the proposed theoretical framework to highlight the role of discursive power in organizational retaliation. Our analysis suggests that issues pertaining to retaliatory violence including individuals’ exclusions from their organizations, and their subsequent labeling as unstable, affect their mental health and negatively contribute to the outcome of whistleblower struggles. We theorize these, by highlighting how intra- and inter-psychic affective and ambivalent attachment to such discourses by those who speak up, influences the use of normative violence by organizations in cases of whistleblowing.
We offer the following contributions. First, we add to the literature on whistleblowing retaliation in which in-depth exploration and theorization of the role of power in ethical disclosures remains scarce. Specifically, we show how whistleblowers’ well-being and their mental health can suffer because of experiences of exclusion from subject positions relating to their employment held prior to whistleblowing, and how organizations use the symptoms of this suffering to discredit them. We also highlight the complex dynamics by which whistleblowers struggle to understand the chaotic experiences of retaliation, which simultaneously causes them to embrace a stigmatized identity as a whistleblower. These empirical observations are analyzed through a poststructuralist psychoanalytic lens which helps us to see how a whistleblower can become passionately attached to dominant organizational discourses, which cause one pain even as they offer a sense of self by validating one’s identity as a whistleblower. Butler’s concept of normative violence helps us to understand this phenomenon. Overall this study contributes to the literature on whistleblower retaliation by offering a more in-depth and nuanced theoretical understanding of power as conditioned and underpinned by affect in organizational settings.
Whistleblower Retaliation and Power
Those who speak out about risky practice, illegality or dangerous activities in their workplace can be at risk of retaliation from colleagues or employers (Burrows
2001; Premeaux and Bedeian
2003; Wilmot
2000). Organizational retaliation is a common response to whistleblowing (Bjørkelo
2013; Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran
2005; Paul and Townsend
1996; Rehg et al.
2008) and appears to be increasing (Miceli and Near
1992; Ethics Resource Centre
2014). Following Rehg et al., we define it as ‘undesirable action taken against a whistleblower—in direct response to the whistle-blowing—who reported wrongdoing internally or externally, outside the organization.’ (
2008, p. 222). Reasons for retaliation vary; managers can feel deeply threatened by whistleblowers (Martin and Rifkin
2004a,
b; Miethe
1999), retaliation can be deployed as a means of deterring other potential whistleblowers in the organization (Armenakis
2004; Ewing
1983; Vandekerckhove et al.
2014; see also Markova and Folger
2012), while both employers and co-workers can resort to reprisals to protect the reputation of specific colleagues (Bolsin et al.
2005; Near et al.
1993) or the organization itself (General Medical Council
2015).
Retaliation can take a number of forms (see Lennane
1996/2012; Miethe
1999; Parmerlee et al.
1982 for a comprehensive overview) including demotion, decreased quality of working conditions (Ethics Resource Centre
2012; Lennane
1996/2012; Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran
2005; Rothschild and Miethe
1999; Vandekerckhove et al.
2014), threats by senior staff, the allocation of menial duties to the whistleblower such that their job becomes degrading, harassment, referral to psychiatrists (Martin and Rifkin
2004a,
b), outright dismissal from work and prolonged legal challenges. The whistleblowers we studied reported many such occurrences. Retaliation can also include tactics aimed at stigmatizing the individual, for example through character assassinations or accusations of being disgruntled employees, spies, or ‘squealers’ (Worth
2013), which are sometimes supported by the media (Jubb
1999; Near and Miceli
1985). These tactics are facilitated by ambivalent perceptions of whistleblowing in wider society; it is often seen as a ‘morally ambiguous activity’ (Thomas
2005, p. 147). While some view it as heroic (e.g., Grant
2002), others see whistleblowing as a traitorous violation of loyalty to one’s organization (Hersch
2002). Whistleblowers are often ‘treated as disturbed or morally suspect’ (Alford
2001, p. 104). Not least because of this ambivalence in how they are perceived, retaliatory tactics can be successfully applied by the wrongdoing organizations and can have impacts on whistleblowers’ well-being, often causing stress and disrupting one’s sense of self.
Various theories of power have been deployed to study the nature and extent of retaliation experienced by whistleblowers. Of these, a perspective derived from Pfeffer’s resource-based view has tended to dominate (Near and Miceli
1986). The idea is that retaliation is proportional to the balance of power between whistleblower and wrongdoer, with power classified as a resource that can be accessed and deployed in the whistleblowing struggle (Miceli and Near
1992,
1994; Near et al.
1993; Near and Miceli
1986). Potential sources of power for the whistleblower include their perceived legitimacy, e.g., through possessing a senior role, or a position in which whistleblowing is ‘mandated’ such as an audit or compliance function (Miceli et al.
1999; Rehg et al.
2008), and support from others within the organization (Miceli et al.
1999). These decrease the likelihood of retaliation, while perceived threats to the power ‘resource’ of the wrongdoer are likely to increase it (Rehg et al.
2008), for example where their actions involve potential harm to the public (Near and Jensen
1993), where the legitimacy (Miethe
1999) or future performance (Miceli and Near
2002) of the organization is being threatened or where an external reporting channel is used (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran
2005; Rothschild
2013). If, on the other hand, the wrongdoing is such that it has become systemic to the organization (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran
2005), for example as part of its culture or climate (Near et al.
1993), retaliation is more likely to occur. This view of power as resource is prevalent in studies of whistleblower retaliation.
Hence, studies have focused on retaliation as a series of ‘types’ or tactics, or as a phenomenon whose likelihood is determined by the balance of power between whistleblower and wrongdoer, in which the control of critical organizational resources by each party is key (Rehg et al.
2008). In recent years, however, whistleblowing has been shown to be a more complex process than previously assumed, involving a series of interactions between the discloser and members of the organization (Martin and Rifkin
2004a,
b; Vandekerckhove et al.
2014). These interactions shape both the position and also the self-understanding of the actors involved. Thus, power is also something that circulates between these parties and is constitutive of their engagements, rather than simply a resource that is either held or not. It appears vital therefore to build on existing work and propose new theories that enable an understanding of these dynamics of power as they play out within the complex and mutually constitutive set of interactions that make up the process of whistleblowing. To date there have been few theoretical framings that understand power in whistleblower retaliation as circulating between both whistleblower and ‘retaliator,’ enacted by both and owned by neither, that sees whistleblowers both engaging in power activity while also resisting it. The complex dynamics of discursive power and its role in how social norms are deployed to legitimize the ostracization of whistleblowers on the one hand, and whistleblowers’ engagement and participation in such dominant and disciplining discourses on the other hand, have not yet been theorized, despite their value in providing a fuller account of whistleblowers’ experiences. In this article, we develop this notion of normative power focusing on how organizations exclude dissenting individuals through mental health discourses, which are deployed by whistleblowers themselves in an affective process that allows them to assume a viable subjectivity. This, we argue, helps us understand the subtle operation of normative power in organizations.
Whistleblower Retaliation and Mental Health
The concept of ‘mental health’ has been used in recent years to understand a variety of experiences (Foucault
1976/2006). It has become a dominant interpretive framework with concomitant terminology, academic disciplines and medical practices (Walker
2006). In whistleblower research discourses of mental health are also drawn upon to understand and to describe the severe consequences of whistleblower retaliation. Researchers, for example, note instances of depression and symptoms analogous to post-traumatic stress disorder (Bjørkelo
2013), categorizing these as mental health impacts. Retaliatory tactics can lead to anxiety and feelings of isolation (Bjørkelo
2013), along with sleep difficulties (Jackson et al.
2010; Peters et al.
2011) and in some cases suicidal feelings (Lennane
1993). These negative mental health symptoms appear following disclosures, with many whistleblowers described as previously ‘high-achieving, respected’ and committed employees (Rothschild
2013, p. 653). In her pioneering work surveying the postdisclosure experiences of 35 individuals who contacted
Whistleblowers Australia, Jeanne Lennane reports on the causes of such issues, including being removed from normal work duties or required to fulfill overly demanding tasks, being isolated from colleagues and/or referral to a psychiatrist. She finds that the stresses accompanying whistleblowing can cause people to lose their livelihoods and to experience marital breakdown, substance abuse and bankruptcy relating to expensive lawsuits (Lennane
1996/2012). Even where not referred to psychiatric counseling by their organizations, many whistleblowers seek it to help them cope (Alford
2001; Rothschild and Miethe
1999). The stigma associated with ‘mental illness’ in society (Corrigan
2005) can be used by retaliatory organizations seeking to discredit a whistleblower. Both the lived experiences of people and the paradoxical response of society combine to make whistleblowing a very stressful endeavor with concomitant negative impacts on people’s well-being. However, there have been few studies focused on this linkage between discourse and practice, showing how understandings of the lived experience of whistleblower retaliation draw upon norms relating to mental health, and how these might be internalized by the whistleblowers themselves. We turn to poststructuralist psychoanalytic theory which has been applied to deal with issues of power and exclusion in relation to normative frameworks of gender, crime (Holloway and Jefferson
2000), public health (Fotaki
2014), psychiatric care (Rizq
2013), race (Hook
2007), among many others, to address these issues. Such framing allows us to consider how discourses shape our subjectivities through psychic internalization. This perspective conceives of people as socially situated subjects whose sense of self is molded by flows of discursive power, and it has the potential to offer novel insights for theorizing the role of normative power in the context of whistleblowing.
A Psychosocial (Poststructuralist and Psychoanalytic) Approach to Power and Retaliation
To explore the complex dynamics of power as it circulates in and between subjects in instances of whistleblower retaliation, it is useful to draw upon Foucault’s poststructuralist account of discursive power which has been influential in organization scholarship to date (Townley
1993; Knights and McCabe
2003). Under this view, power is inherent to the formation of the subject; people identify with discourses that both enable them through providing a sense of identity, but constrain them in circumscribing what is possible. This approach has shed light on how employees can be subjected to powerful discourses, such that they are effectively controlled and disciplined by these (Barratt
2003; Hardy and Thomas
2015; Knights and McCabe
2003; Rhodes and Wray-Bliss
2013; Roberts
2005; Townley
1993).
Foucault’s theoretical account, while insightful, is limited in its ability to illuminate the specific dynamics of subjectification, on what happens at the level of the subject’s psyche when they engage with power (Mumby
2005; Newton
1998), or as Roberts (
2005) describes, the moment ‘in which subjectivity becomes “inextricably entwined” with power/knowledge’ (Roberts
2005, p. 620). Foucault’s account is also critiqued for ignoring affect in such dynamics (Hook
2007). Recently scholars have proposed that Lacanian, ‘poststructuralist’ psychoanalysis offers a useful contribution, shedding light on Foucauldian subjectification by accounting for the contribution of psychic dynamics in this process (Pavon-Cuellar
2010; Stavrakakis
2008). Butler’s
Psychic Life of Power has been particularly influential in introducing such ideas to organization studies (Riach et al.
2014; Harding et al.
2014). She describes subjects’ psychic desires for recognition within the symbolic order as fueling an ongoing quest for new and more promising affective identifications (Butler
1997a,
b). There is no subject prior to their interpellation by discourses within the social. Coming into being, we desire recognition from elements of our social worlds, including the people close to us (colleagues, family members) but also from symbolic, abstract notions including our professional associations or personal ethics. This recognition is necessary before we can be accepted as viable social subjects; without it we are non-existent in our social milieu (Butler
1997a,
2004a). Subjects are therefore ‘constituted through norms’ that define the terms in which they can be recognized. The denial of recognition is thus catastrophic as it threatens the subject with ‘symbolic extinction’ (Butler
1997a, p. 7). Seeking to avoid such consequences, she suggests, we are compelled to subject ourselves to norms that potentially cause us pain:
Called by an injurious name, I come into social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my existence, because a certain narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me because they constitute me socially (Butler
1997a, p. 104)
There is a paradox inherent to ‘injurious interpellation’ (Lloyd
2005, p. 451); the same trauma of subjection that offers us a place in the social can simultaneously cause us pain. We are effectively ‘un-done’ by our affective desires for being recognized as valid subjects: ‘the subject produces its coherence at the cost of its own complexity’ (Butler
1993, p. 115). The organizations we work for can contribute to such ‘undoing’; workplace norms have a strong influence over our sense of self not least because organizational rules and processes tend to ‘fix’ subjects into position, even where this is unwilled (Riach et al.
2016). Roberts describes organizational leaders’ experiences of being refused recognition by management discourses alongside the subsequent control that such denial exerts: ‘the refusal [of recognition] contains the employee by robbing him/her of a sense of existence and capability’ (
2005, p. 634). This is crucial for understanding how whistleblowers adopt the identity of excluded individuals or even unstable mental health victims after they are denied their identity as capable and successful professionals.
A further contribution to Foucauldian understandings of subjectivity is the concept of affect (Butler
1997b; Hook
2007; Stavrakakis
2008). In Butler’s reading of Foucault via Lacan, it is our desire for subjection that leads us to be ‘passionately attached’ to norms. The subject ‘responds to reflections of itself in emotional ways, according to whether that reflection signifies a diminution or augmentation of its own possibility of future persistence and life’ (Butler
2004a, p. 235, emphasis added). Butler describes the ‘passion and grief and rage we feel’ as part of subjectification, affects that ‘tear us from ourselves, bind us to others, transport us, undo us…’ (
2004a, p. 20). In this way, affective subjectification is ‘radically external’ to the self; rather than being an ‘internal’ phenomenon it acts as a ‘technology of subjectivity’ that links subjects to wider social structures (Hook
2007, p. 270). Such insights notwithstanding, affect tends to be overlooked in poststructuralist accounts of subjectivity within organization studies (Stavrakakis
2008) despite some exceptions (Kenny
2012,
2017; Tyler and Cohen
2008). By introducing concepts of desire, recognition and affect, Butler enriches Foucault’s account of how the subject becomes ‘entwined’ with power/knowledge. We draw on this conceptualization to explain how stigmatization of whistleblowers as disloyal organizational members leaves them with few options: they are forced to accept the position of the wronged subject suffering from mental health problems if they do not want to position themselves entirely on the outside of the organization. In this sense, they retain some paradoxical sense of attachment to their organization.
More recently Butler’s work explores how powerful discourses proliferate by matrices of exclusion that define who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out,’ through the recognition that they confer (Butler
2004a), noting that this can cause suffering for those ‘de-realized subjects’ who are left outside. Perceived to be neither grievable nor valuable, such lives are precarious, more vulnerable to violence than other subjects (Butler
2004a,
2009, p. 25). She analyzes this exclusion of subjectivities in the case of victims of the US-led conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East who are cast as threats rather than as humans who deserve protection from illegitimate state violence. Butler conceptualizes this as ‘normative violence,’ a kind of violence engendered by the play of norms that can create exclusions and foreclose subjectivity (
2004b), sometimes facilitating more ‘typical,’ overt, forms of violence including physical forms (Butler
1990,
2004a,
b) and acting as a prerequisite to these (Chambers
2007). Overall these ideas show precisely why we are vulnerable, as subjects, to dominant discourses and the impact of being excluded from them.
Reflecting on how exclusionary violence also relates to work organizations, Butler describes the ‘…the arbitrary and violent rhythms of being instrumentalized as disposable labor’ (Butler
2009, p. 41). She shows how such practices are effective because capitalist forms of organization elicit from us the kinds of passionate attachments to dominant social norms, values and rules, which are re-affirmed and re-embedded through circulating discourses in ways that ultimately represent normative violence, suggesting that power is both an intra (psychic)- and intersubjective (social) process rather than a property or attribute that one can obtain at the expense of the other. While Butler does not expand on this in the context of work organizations, others have recently illustrated how her ‘recognition-based critique of the conditions governing viable subjectivity’ (Riach et al.
2014, p. 1679) can shed light on dynamics of normative power in organizations (Borgerson
2005; Harding et al.
2013,
2014; Riach et al.
2016), not least in relation to sexuality and gender (Tyler and Cohen
2008) but also the consumption of management textbooks (Harding
2003), ethical workplaces (Kenny
2010) and organizational violence (Varman and Al-Amoudi
2016). This theory has recently been applied to understand the experiences of whistleblowers in the aftermath of their disclosures (Kenny
2017) and their exclusions from recruitment practices and friendship circles because of having engaged in ‘impossible speech.’ It has not yet been utilized in studies of whistleblower retaliation and mental health.
Overall, this view of power has the potential to add to understandings of whistleblower retaliation. Here power is more than a resource, something we either possess or do not; rather it is multiple, complex and implicated in the very formation of the subject by psychic desires for recognition. In this article, we show how a poststructuralist and psychosocial perspective can illuminate the ways in which specific discourses of mental health can come to construct whistleblower subjects even as they threaten their well-being and are actively resisted by subjects themselves. The proposed framing builds on existing understandings of power dynamics to provide more nuanced insights on whistleblower retaliation and explain how normative violence arises in organizations.