The Psychosocial Impacts of Whistleblower Retaliation: Shattering Employee Resilience and the Workplace Promise

This book explores the psychosocial impacts of whistleblower retaliation, including financial, legal, social, physical, and emotional well-being. It examines the toxic tactics of retaliation, such as gaslighting, mobbing, marginalizing, shunning, devaluing, double-binding, career blocking, counter-accusing, bullying, and doxxing, which can lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse, and suicide. It is a useful resource for social workers, mental health providers, advocates, and other support services professionals and practitioners to assist whistleblowers and provides a lexicon for forensic evaluations.

Format: Hardback
Length: 231 pages
Publication date: 13 December 2022
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG

Whistleblower retaliation poses significant risks to individuals who courageously come forward to expose wrongdoing within organizations. This book delves into the multifaceted harms associated with whistleblower retaliation, encompassing its psychosocial impacts on employees and the institutional dysfunction it engenders and perpetuates.

Stigma and biases against whistleblowers hinder their ability to make protected disclosures when harm to others is at stake. Retaliatory toxic tactics create an atmosphere of fear and encourage bystander behavior within corporations.

In this comprehensive book, the authors examine psychosocial impacts across various domains, including financial, legal, social, physical, and emotional well-being. Ten of the 14 chapters specifically focus on the toxic tactics of retaliation employed by employers: gaslighting, mobbing, marginalizing, shunning, devaluing, double-binding, career blocking, counter-accusing, bullying, and doxxing. These toxic tactics form the foundation of workplace traumatic stress (WTS) and can lead to severe consequences, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse, and even suicide.

WTS is a term that distinguishes between workplace violence or job stress, which may be components of WTS but fail to capture the systemic and hostile work environment that targets an employee. Understanding WTS and its profound effects on identity, moral injury, and worldviews is crucial for clinicians working with victims of this type of hostile work environment.

The Psychosocial Impacts of Whistleblower Retaliation serves as a valuable resource for social workers, mental health providers, advocates, and other support services professionals and practitioners. It provides valuable insights into how to approach patients suffering from whistleblower retaliation and offers a comprehensive lexicon for forensic evaluations. Lawyers, particularly those specializing in employment, labor, and Qui Tam law, will find this book particularly useful in understanding the legal implications and protections available to whistleblowers.

By shedding light on the psychosocial consequences of whistleblower retaliation, this book contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by those who courageously speak truth to power. It underscores the importance of fostering a culture of transparency, accountability, and protection for whistleblowers, as well as the need for robust institutional mechanisms to prevent and address retaliation against those who expose misconduct.

Weight: 547g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783031190544
Edition number: 1st ed. 2022