Privacy :: Business Information Essays

Privacy Globalization is the tendency of businesses to spread throughout the world to offer their products and services. To reflect their global market presence, multi-national companies have adopted management models such as region-specific management, and product-specific management to maximize the potential to offer efficient products and services to their customers. One such management model that has been successful in the past few years is the business process outsourcing model. Businesses outsource processes such as back office operations and customer support services offshore. In some cases, these include access to personal information to a third-party agency leading to violation of personal information privacy. One may argue as to what constitutes personal information, as many theories of privacy exist. This paper addresses some noteworthy such theories. The paper also addresses ethical issues surrounding privacy of personal information in the context of business process outsourcing. Webster’s dictionary defines privacy as freedom from unauthorized intrusion. Alan Westin defines Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.1. Parent defines privacy as the condition in which others do not possess undocumented personal information.2 Lin and Loiu address the issue of privacy as undocumented personal knowledge.3 Privacy as Control of Information can be described as the information that can be made accessible to the public. The information that is available to the public is controlled by an individual. Any other information found about the individual other than that released by him can be considered as an invasion of the individual’s privacy.4 The meaning of what privacy is to an extent is driven by the society and its moral norms. Lin and Loui observe that reasonable expectations of privacy in public places must change as our social environment changes.5 As moral and social norms change in a society, the expectation from an individual towards society changes and thereby the individual’s privacy values. For example, slavery was an accepted practice in the late 19th century, today it’s not in practice. In the current information technology age, when an individual submits his personal information for purchasing merchandise online, it is within his expectation that his personal information be protected by the website. In future with the increasing use of technology in the day to day activities, new issues of privacy will arise making today’s notions of privacy out of date. One such issue is the privacy of personal information in business process outsourcing.