ABSTRACTThe main objective of this study is to discuss the ramifications of considering privacy as a public good for business organizations. Using an extensive literature review, an attempt to achieve this objective is made by trying to answer the following questions: What are the historical and philosophical roots of privacy? How is the concept of privacy defined and what are the controversies surrounding different definitions of privacy? Does an individual have a right to privacy? If the answer to question three (...) is in affirmative, what are the philosophical and legal foundations of that right? How can an individual's privacy be invaded? Is privacy right an individual right or does it have a societal value? What are the reasons for considering privacy as a public good? Finally, the article offers prescriptive insights for organizations to successfully obtain information from consumer while respecting their privacy. (shrink)

A growing body of theory has focused on privacy as being contextually defined, where individuals have highly particularized judgments about the appropriateness of what, why, how, and to whom information flows within a specific context. Such a social contract understanding of privacy could produce more practical guidance for organizations and managers who have employees, users, and future customers all with possibly different conceptions of privacy across contexts. However, this theoretical suggestion, while intuitively appealing, has not been empirically examined. This study (...) validates a social contract approach to privacy by examining whether and how privacy norms vary across communities and contractors. The findings from this theoretical examination support the use of contractual business ethics to understand privacy in research and in practice. As predicted, insiders to a community had significantly different understandings of privacy norms as compared to outsiders. In addition, all respondents held different privacy norms across hypothetical contexts, thereby suggesting privacy norms are contextually understood within a particular community of individuals. The findings support two conclusions. First, individuals hold different privacy norms without necessarily having diminished expectations of privacy. Individuals differed on the factors they considered important in calculating privacy expectations, yet all groups had robust privacy expectations across contexts. Second, outsiders have difficulty in understanding the privacy norms of a particular community. For managers and scholars, this renders privacy expectations more difficult to identify at a distance or in deductive research. The findings speak directly to the needs of organizations to manage a diverse set of privacy issues across stakeholder groups. (shrink)

When information is transformed from what has traditionally been a paper-based format into digitized elements with meaning associated to them, new and intriguing discussions begin surrounding proper and improper uses of this codified and easily transmittable information. As these discussions continue, some health care providers, insurers, laboratories, pharmacies, and other healthcare stakeholders are creating and retroactively digitizing our medical information with the unambiguous endorsement of the federal government.Some argue that these enormous databases of medical information offer improved access to timely (...) information, evidence-based treatments, and complete records from which to provide care. To the extent that these claims are true, it would seem that this is a valuable asset that offers immeasurable benefit to all. Others believe this digitization to be an egregious invasion of privacy. In this article, I investigate the broad research questions of whether the public good aspect of capturing private health information outweighs individual interests and whether it is ethical to mandate participation in health information exchanges by all individuals who use the U.S. health system. (shrink)

:This article examines privacy threats arising from the use of data mining by private Australian health insurance companies. Qualitative interviews were conducted with key experts, and Australian governmental and nongovernmental websites relevant to private health insurance were searched. Using Rationale, a critical thinking tool, the themes and considerations elicited through this empirical approach were developed into an argument about the use of data mining by private health insurance companies. The argument is followed by an ethical analysis guided by classical philosophical (...) theories—utilitarianism, Mill’s harm principle, Kant’s deontological theory, and Helen Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity framework. Both the argument and the ethical analysis find the use of data mining by private health insurance companies in Australia to be unethical. Although private health insurance companies in Australia cannot use data mining for risk rating to cherry-pick customers and cannot use customers’ personal information for unintended purposes, this article nonetheless concludes that the secondary use of customers’ personal information and the absence of customers’ consent still suggest that the use of data mining by private health insurance companies is wrong. (shrink)

There are times when two essential human rights may appear to be in conUlict, or need to be balanced against one another. This paper examines the right of a party, such as ofUicials, a group of people or an individual, to ‘privacy and conUidentiality’ when others may have a conUlicting ‘right to know’ about them. Although this conUlict has already been studied by other researchers, there is a lot of controversy about a rightful balance in new technology driven situations. I (...) conducted a survey on the views of college students over an actual case of a university associate professor whose immoral conduct had been reported to a few of the faculty by a PhD student who had given birth to his child on the promise of marriage while the teacher was already married and had a child. I asked the students if they believed protecting the privacy of the teacher was more important than the school’s right to know. I also asked if they believed a child born to the single mother in such a relationship has the right to know about his father, or the single mother has the right to keep that information conUidential. Finally I asked the students if they believed in general that the ‘right to privacy and conUidentiality’ was more important than the ‘right to know’. This paper reports on the results of this survey on 222 students at an international university in Japan. (shrink)