Whistleblowers

Because of certain events and media scandals that have surrounded the business community a former forgotten kind of employees has regained importance they are called the whistleblowers. Their importance has reached such tremendous heights that they were named in Time magazine's 2002 Persons of the year because of their crucial involvement in the Enron case and many others that followed after that. The dictionary definition states that whistleblower as "One who reveals something covert or informs against another person". Whistleblowers can get their title no matter what position of the company they occupy as long as they have reliable information any employee can inform of unethical procedures or illegal that the company they are working for might be engaging.

There are many cases where whistleblowers have been the key part in the prosecution of CEOs directors, financial consultants, etc. that had been engaging in illegal procedures and that if there have not be because of the whistleblowers aide the authorities would have never even notice those felonies. There are many examples one that is cited on the article is the case of James Alderson a chief financial officer in a small hospital that sued the company that acquired the hospital a large medical company called Quorum Health Group Inc. part of Columbia/HCA Company because he found out that the kept two sets of books for preparing healthcare costs for Medicare patients one that was sent to the Federal government with highly inflated costs and the other one that detailed actual cost of operations.

The case started in 1990 and ended until 2003 we also have to consider that in 1990 the business environment did not have the huge concerns that we have today over the management of financial information and there were not many laws to aide whistleblowers in their cause. But since that time new policies and laws have emerged to support whistleblowers and there is a greater focus of executives over ethical issues.

By blowing the whistle Alderson knew that he was jeopardizing his career and he did he had to finance the whole case with his checkbook, he lost his job and had to leave his town because he could not find any job in the area but he was rewarded with the huge bonus he received from the settlement proceeds which he admits was a huge incentive but he had to pay the price for a long period of time now he has enough money for his retirement and to pay the bills and