
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990                   TAG: 9003143047
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHISTLE-BLOWERS CAN RISK CAREERS

Whistle-blowers in business should have their data in hand and they should try to work out their complaints with the company before making them public, a Chicago ethics professor said Tuesday.

"It takes a lot of courage to be a whistle-blower and your chances of being a martyr are great," said Patricia Werhane, business ethics professor at Loyola University.

She spoke at the second annual Roanoke Valley Ethics Conference at the Sheraton Airport Inn, sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Werhane based much of her talk on two Morton Thiokol engineers identified as whistle-blowers when they testified about the cause of the 1985 space shuttle Challenger disaster in which seven people were killed.

The engineers were "good guys who behaved badly. . . . They put seven people at risk," she said. "We have to ask why no engineer went to the chief executive or to the press to question the launch."

Most whistle-blowers are labeled troublemakers, quit their jobs, or are fired, Werhane said.

Of the two at Morton Thiokol, one lost a suit against the company, was blackballed from the aerospace industry and now speaks to ethics groups. After an extended vacation, the other returned to the company and was promoted to vice president.

In one of several discussion groups on the ethical question, Louis Hodges, religion professor at Washington and Lee University, said a person has a moral obligation to blow a whistle, once he or she is well informed and has a case built that harm is being done. Of course, whistle-blowing is a synonym for tattling, Hodges said.

Bob Benne, head of the Roanoke College religion department, said it would seem that if large companies hear employee complaints, whistle-blowers or troublemakers would have a lot less credibility outside the business.

Companies are trying new approaches to ethical issues, Werhane said. A Citicorp game on work ethics has raised the level of employee consciousness to the problem.

They are trying new things but if they don't have top management behind them, she said, it won't work.

A. Byron Smith, a Roanoke oil company owner, said ethics in business is more effective and far-reaching than the public thinks.

But Hodges suggested that saying "good ethics is good business may be trying to be moral for immoral reasons."

by CNB