The focus of the article is the after-math of whistleblowing. Based on a literature review, we discuss some strategies for how organizations can learn from whistleblowing processes. The effectiveness of whistleblowing, which means that the reported wrongdoing is terminated at least partly within a reasonable timeframe, seems to depend mainly on the following three important factors: organizational climate, internal whistleblowing routines and procedures, and managerial responses to whistleblowing. We argue that whistleblowing processes can be of great value to an organization, and a source to organizational learning, rather than a problem. We propose an extension of the concept of whistleblowing effectiveness by including organizational learning in addition to just correcting the wrongdoing in a reasonable amount of time, as described in the literature. The aim of this theoretical paper is thus to discuss if and how organizations in addition to correct the wrongdoing within a reasonable amount of time (single-loop learning) can take initiatives to organizational learning from the wrongdoing and the whistleblowing processes (double-loop learning). We propose a theoretical framework for organizational learning in the after-math of whistleblowing.
Keyword: Whistleblowing, whistleblowing effectiveness, organizational learning, learning strategies
