Dr. Brian Richardson receives Top Paper honors! | Communication Studies
April 3, 2017

Dr. Brian Richardson receives Top Paper honors!

Dr. Brian Richardson received Top Paper honors in the Organizational Communication Division at the annual Eastern Communication Association conference held March 29-April 2 in Boston, Massachusetts. His paper, "Of Saints and Confessors: Developing an Attributions-Based Typology of Whistleblowers," critiques how whistleblowers are portrayed in the media and in scholarly research. Dr. Richardson develops a typology of whistleblowers based on whether they were complicit in the wrongdoing and their motivations for blowing the whistle. The model identifies four whistleblowing types: the saint, the opportunist, the confessor, and the jilted lover. Dr. Richardson is continuing to work on this research project and will next examine how stakeholder groups perceive these different whistleblowers.