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Locating a Space for Ethics to Appear in Decision-making: Privacy as an Exemplar

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Abstract

Using concepts from Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society, this paper argues that as expertise proliferates questions of ethics in decision-making fall through gaps between domains of expertise. As a consequence, unethical outcomes are unattached to actions taken with no one accountable or responsible for these outcomes. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), a case study is presented showing how the sale of students’ personal information by the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) escaped questions of ethics. The sale of student information was the product of the convergence of narrowly focussed technology and education expert actions and decisions with an earlier two-stage translation of privacy from a potential ethical issue to an issue of expert rule creation and interpretation. The purpose of this paper is to show, through an example, how questions of ethics are displaced in expert decision-making and to enable the public, managers, individuals and experts to recognize displacements and, through this, create a space for ethics to appear.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business Administration, University of Regina, 3737 Wqscana Parkway, Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 0A2, Canada

    William Bonner

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  1. William Bonner
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Correspondence to William Bonner.

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Bill has conducted extensive research in the area of information technology and privacy, with a particular emphasis on how privacy issues play out in practice. The variety and complexity of interacting influences that shape privacy in practice has lead Bill to expand the scope of his research to include history, ethics and public plicy.

Notes

Notes

  1. 1

    Canada did not pass such legislation until the 1980s. Others have read privacy rights into sections of the U.S. Constitution, but privacy as a specific right is not mentioned in these sections (Peslak, 2005).

  2. 2

    The terms are often used interchangeably. For the sake of clarity, fair information principles are guiding lights that are then operationalized into practical rules that are enacted in practice. Hence principles are general and practices are on-the-ground enactments.

  3. 3

    Due to the influence of the OECD’s FIP in privacy legislation around the world, including Canada, it is the focus in this study. Much more detail on the development and subsequent spread of OECD’s FIP has been published elsewhere (Bonner and Chiasson, 2005).

  4. 4

    None of the eight OECD FIP contains the word privacy. Each principle does contain the word data.

  5. 5

    WhoWhere? Inc. had contracted banner advertising to DoubleClick. Thus, the CBE would earn 25% of the net advertising revenue that DoubleClick would pay to WhoWhere? Inc.

  6. 6

    More distant events were also influential, such as the public pronouncements of then U.S. President Clinton and Vice-President Gore, who envisioned computers on every school desk (Moll, 1997). But action takes place locally and this group’s report was the call to action for other local groups.

  7. 7

    This inside view research is potentially insightful, but in many respects fortuitous; situations cannot be predicted in advance. A good example of such research involves the analysis of events and decisions surrounding Pinto fires in the 1970s (Gioia, 1992).

  8. 8

    There is evidence that others, especially the media, do not listen when experts try to explain the limits of their areas or objects of expertise. See for instance the role of the media in creating myths surrounding computer technology in the 1950s and 1960s (Martin, 1993).

  9. 9

    The displacement of ethics through the gaps between action and subsequent accountability and responsibility has been postulated in networked specialized organizations (Daboub and Calton, 2002).

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Bonner, W. Locating a Space for Ethics to Appear in Decision-making: Privacy as an Exemplar. J Bus Ethics 70, 221–234 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9107-4

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