Management has much to do with responsibilities. They are so essential to management, that their very existence is sometimes overlooked. But once you realize that business is about exchanging value, you will see that that very transaction entails certain responsibilities.

It may seem to some people that talking about responsibilities is a 'fad'. Will it "blow over"? Well, perhaps it is sometimes treated as not much more than a fad and in that case it might wel blow over. But if you look at business organizations that, all over the world, have been important for a long time, you see that they have often taken from their very start the existence of responsibilities very seriously.

What is perhaps new is that these days responsibilities relate to a much wider spectrum of issues. Sustainability means that you have to be responsible to people who are not even born yet and to creatures typically not present in your conference rooms. International corporate social responsibility means that you have to be responsible to people in parts of the world which you had never heard of before. And empowerment, to stay closer to home, means that you have to be more responsible to the people you work with.

But there is also much to be gained from being responsible.

Whistleblowing

There are several ways of looking at whistleblowing. There is the moral perspective and then you see someone fighting, rightfully or wrongly, against some injustice or lack of responsibility, and also you see such a person become the victim of the organization's inability to deal with its own flaws.

There is also the organizational learning perspective. There, whistleblowing stands for the inability of an organization to learn from its mistakes, to the point that it crucifies the person who points out those mistakes. A llearniong organization would have processes which respond to a stakeholders' criticism in time, before anything like a "stakeholder scandal" turns it into a serious crisis.

And then there is the governance perspective, where whistleblowing indicates lacking governance processes, to the detriment of the organization's stakeholders.

Concerning whistleblowing, myths are heard. One is that whistleblowers are troublemakers, perhaps with behavioral problems, looking for attention. This is not backed by the research and it is in fact based on invalid reasoning: the fact that someone causes some trouble at some point does not necessarily mean that he or she is a troublemaker, only that trouble has come onto his or her path. In fact, most whistleblowers have a record of long time exemplary service to their organization, before they can be associated with 'trouble'. Perhaps the people who see whistleblowers as troublemakers had better think about the question, whether there is any truth to the criticism that is being raised by them.

Another myth is that whistleblowers are disloyal. In fact, most whistleblowers have histories of being very loyal, more than most, to their organization, and show great strength in raising their criticism in accordance with their loyalty to the organization.

Loyalty should not be confused for sheep behavior (much like "team mentality" is often confused for a "don't rock the boat" mentality). One can be loyal to the organization, to someone's section of the organization, to someone's boss, to one's colleagues and, not to forget, to the clients; also, someone can be loyal to oneself and to his or her profession. Typically, a whistleblower is caught between these loyalties. He or she sees some grave mistake or unjustice from one section of the organization, its managing board, or his or her direct boss, while other loyalties make it hard for that person to walk away from that mistake or injustice. Probably, without a serious sense of loyalty, whistlebowers would not bother, or at least not bother to the same degree.

Of course, it is important to draw the line somewhere. It is important to find definitions of 'stakeholder' which on the one hand protect the legitimate stakeholder and on the other hand discourages the individual who under the guise of whistleblowing intends to harm his or her organization.