Online Privacy as a Corporate Social Responsibility- an Empirical Study
Business Ethics: A European Review Volume 20 Number 1 January 2011
Online privacy as a corporate social responsibility: an empirical study
Irene Pollach
Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
Information technology and the Internet have added a new stakeholder concern to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda: online privacy. While theory suggests that online privacy is a CSR, only very few studies in the business ethics literature have connected these two. Based on a study of CSR disclosures, this article contributes to the existing literature by exploring whether and how the largest IT companies embrace online privacy as a CSR. The findings indicate that only a small proportion of the companies have comprehensive privacy programs, although more than half of them voice moral or relational motives for addressing online privacy. The privacy measures they have taken are primarily compliance measures, while measures that stimulate a stakeholder dialogue are rare. Overall, a wide variety of approaches to addressing privacy was found, which suggests that no institutionalization of privacy practices has taken place as yet. The study therefore indicates that online privacy is rather new on the CSR agenda, currently playing only a minor role.
Introduction
Since the 1990s, companies striving to be good corporate citizens have had to devise strategies to address issues such as pollution, energy use, waste production, animal testing, child labor, sweatshops, workforce diversity, or advertising to children. It has become a de-facto standard for very large corporations to publish social reports documenting how they address these issues in the marketplace, the workplace, the supply chain, and the community in order to fulfill their role as good corporate citizens (Snider et al. 2003). The advent of the Internet has not only revolutionized many business models but has also redefined what it means to be a good corporate citizen (Post
Online privacy as a corporate social responsibility: an empirical study
Irene Pollach
Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
Information technology and the Internet have added a new stakeholder concern to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda: online privacy. While theory suggests that online privacy is a CSR, only very few studies in the business ethics literature have connected these two. Based on a study of CSR disclosures, this article contributes to the existing literature by exploring whether and how the largest IT companies embrace online privacy as a CSR. The findings indicate that only a small proportion of the companies have comprehensive privacy programs, although more than half of them voice moral or relational motives for addressing online privacy. The privacy measures they have taken are primarily compliance measures, while measures that stimulate a stakeholder dialogue are rare. Overall, a wide variety of approaches to addressing privacy was found, which suggests that no institutionalization of privacy practices has taken place as yet. The study therefore indicates that online privacy is rather new on the CSR agenda, currently playing only a minor role.
Introduction
Since the 1990s, companies striving to be good corporate citizens have had to devise strategies to address issues such as pollution, energy use, waste production, animal testing, child labor, sweatshops, workforce diversity, or advertising to children. It has become a de-facto standard for very large corporations to publish social reports documenting how they address these issues in the marketplace, the workplace, the supply chain, and the community in order to fulfill their role as good corporate citizens (Snider et al. 2003). The advent of the Internet has not only revolutionized many business models but has also redefined what it means to be a good corporate citizen (Post