Book Launch Professor Kate Kenny

You are invited to the book launch of ‘Whistleblowing: Toward a new theory’ (Harvard University Press, 2019), by Professor Kate Kenny.
A wine reception will follow an introduction to the book by NUI Galway President Professor Ciarán O hÓgartaigh, Professor Ricca Edmondson and Dr Tom Clonan.

Hosted by the Whitaker Institute and Management Discipline, NUI Galway.

About the book: Despite their substantial contribution to society, whistleblowers are considered martyrs more than heroes. When people expose serious wrongdoing in their organizations, they are often punished or ignored. Many end up isolated by colleagues, their professional careers destroyed. The financial industry, rife with scandals, is the focus of Kate Kenny’s penetrating global study. Introducing whistleblowers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Ireland working at companies like Wachovia, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Countrywide–Bank of America, Whistleblowing suggests practices that would make it less perilous to hold the powerful to account and would leave us all better off.

Kenny interviewed the men and women who reported unethical and illegal conduct at major corporations in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. Using the concept of affective recognition to explain how the norms at work powerfully influence our understandings of right and wrong, she reframes whistleblowing as a collective phenomenon, not just a personal choice but a vital public service.

About the speakers:
Ricca Edmondson is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is also Visiting Professor at the University of Tampere, Finland, and Editor of the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology. Among other work, she is currently carrying out research with colleagues from the US and Canada into forms of motivation to wisdom and virtue.
Dr Tom Clonan served as an Irish Army Officer from 1989 to 2000. He is Security Analyst with the Irish Times, providing in-depth defence and military analysis of fast-moving international events. He also provides expert analysis to RTÉ television and radio, and international broadcasters including the BBC and Sky News. he became one of Ireland’s most high-profile whistleblowers when his research on sexual violence in the Defence Forces led to a Government inquiry. Today he is also a campaigner for disability rights.

More information about the book: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975798