Loyalty, Voice, Exit. A new perspective on Hirschman’s legacy

With regard to Hirschman’s “Exit, Voice & Loyalty” triptych, this paper shows how it has turned ethical conduct into a protocol of actions by replacing individual values with pragmatic behavior for whistleblowers. After looking back on the history of whistleblowers as viewed through the management sciences, we clarify the whistleblower's approach by showing how each stage in the “Exit, Voice & Loyalty” series represents a distinct aspect of their ethical conduct. Hirschman’s model is inverted (Loyalty, Voice & Exit), offering the whistleblower a sequence to their ethical conduct.