CHAPTER 7

Ethical Information Systems

The computing power available for processing data from all around the globe has risen to a level at which fundamentally new corporate policies and practices of data analysis are emerging. For instance, monitoring the performance of individual work effort represents a significant cost for an organization, and inefficiencies are created when the flow of information on individual performance decreases (Alchian and Demsetz 1972). Thus, using advanced techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence that enable data scientists and professionals to harvest the available information in innovative ways is a mandatory corporate process. There is a crucial need for each business to develop systems and digital frameworks on which reliable information can be collected and analyzed such as employee productivity, flexibility in technology adoption, added value per measured unit, and behavior reflections on the factors of business culture and financial returns.

Developments in technology enable corporations to manage a huge amount of information. Indeed, organizations with services and applications such as search engine platforms, e-mails, personal messages apps, picture store depositors, and other cloud-based data know a lot more about us than we might have ever realized. Technological advances enable the management of information with multidimensional approaches. For instance, researchers demonstrate machine learning with advanced techniques that successfully identify people’s emotional situation based entirely on real-time recordings of their facial expressions, voice tone, and speech (Wang, Nie, and Lu 2014). Thus, not only is this information extremely sensitive, but the amount of this information collected through computer vision and analyzed by artificial intelligence suggests that an individual is not isolated in terms of privacy and personal data. The age of distrust demonstrates that we will not be able to recognize whether a behavior is morally acceptable, when a human or a robot tells the truth, and whom to trust while trying to cope with demanding corporate dilemmas. Uploading your personal data to an interconnected technological system capable of analyzing anything through data science, whether done intentionally or not, must be brought under the lens of ethics and human intervention.

Although information overload is not just a matter of Internet and e-mails, in the presence of attention manipulation, competitive information supply can reduce consumer knowledge by causing information overload (Persson 2018). Considering this, information overload leads to the exploitation of technological applications—whether it be a personal notebook or a personal pocket-size computer, such as a smartphone—in an effort to always remain competitive and achieve corporate goals. However, using a personal device for corporate reasons can raise moral issues. In many cases, an individual uses his or her own mobile device for accessing private organizational information and applications. Thus, the corporation must develop an extended set of guidelines for cases where a personal device is lost or stolen to ensure that both individuals’ privacy and corporate information will not be used against them by third-party entities. Furthermore, if an advanced machine is capable of thinking, who will be responsible for data management and control of machine behavior? Hence, emerging technologies can lead to many security and connectivity issues.

In addition, the variety of interfaces and experiences is increasing over time, and although we take advantage of technology, we are getting addicted to these elements of daily data control and management. The workforce is becoming more flexible, mobile, interconnected, and influenced by technology while increasing efficiency and adopting intelligent machines in its daily protocols and encounters. Corporate environments of previous centuries had no individual-level applications at all. During the early phase of industrialization of tools essential to produce outputs, such as a hammer, more efficiently, data management was never a problem. The human being was the only privileged entity capable of thinking, behaving, and evaluating policies and operations. However, the technological advancements of the last two centuries have changed almost everything in corporate policy making, and since then being ethical has not been a concern exclusive to human mandate any more.

Indeed, anything that can be digitized will be digitized, and thus it is crucial for practitioners to understand the implications of digitization for their organization and employees, considering that digitization accelerates the speed of change that companies are facing (Kohnke 2017). Algorithms support humans in deciding whom to hire, whom to promote, and what data to consider in order to act rationally in terms of profit maximization. However, artificial intelligence and advanced machines are not developed to produce values, opinions, and beliefs in a way that a human does. This is not the aim of artificial intelligence. If the creator of a system contributes to its core elements with personal prejudices, then human bias consists of a critical moral issue for technological implementation. Skewed data and technical limitations may slow down human displacement in many business sectors; however, the owners or holders of information and technology as a combination of tools that can lead to corporate excellence have a robust advantage against their competitors in the technological age.

The availability and storage of vast amounts of digital data is leading to the exploitation of the innovative capabilities of computing power. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other similar advanced technologies can quickly capture and analyze a wealth of physical and digital data that a human cannot even approach as an intelligent worker. Thus, a human worker would have to devote a lot more time to these complicated and demanding tasks in order to compete with machines. Under this pressure, technology is converting the worker into a 24/7 available employee for the employer through technological applications such as a simple e-mail, which connects two or more individuals instantly without geographical boundaries.

Furthermore, ethical concerns arise with the implantation of microchip technology inside the human body using electromagnetic fields to identify electronically stored data. This information system implants microchips that embody electronic control systems under the human skin or even in the brain in order to have wireless communication with computers. In particular, short-range wireless connectivity technology can use the capability of the human body to transport signals that provide intuitive, simple, and safe communication between two electronically compatible devices (Pop 2011). Health organizations have identified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Baan, et al. 2011); however, in some cases this could be a mandatory part of the employee’s contract. This constitutes an extreme and critical ethical issue, because microchip implants can be used to provide the owner of technology with a tremendous amount of private data, and thus moral awareness must be ensured in many diverse fields.

Ethical Measurements

Information systems give practitioners and corporations the ability to concentrate an excessive amount of data about individuals. Starting with basic workforce data, according to record-keeping standards of most civilized countries across the world, employers gather various kinds of information such as demographic data, including the employee’s full name, as used for social security purposes; the employee’s identifying symbol or number if one is used in place of name on any time, work, or payroll records; address with zip code, birth date (depending on local law requirements), sex and/or gender (the difference has been analyzed in a previous chapter), time and day of week when the employee’s workweek begins and ends, as well as contract arrangements such as total wages paid in each pay period and the date of payment. Practitioners can record the number of hours worked each day and workweek by individuals, the basis on which employee’s wages are paid, and other additional information such as total overtime earnings.

Also, practitioners can gather through mandatory corporate procedures important information about the employee’s skills and qualifications, work experiences, as well as perceptual data such as their social media posts concerning the work, and performance data on their financial and operational efficiency. Job roles and contract arrangements as data can be used for policy making on serving interests, and information about individuals’ skills and performance can be used as a point of reference in exploiting the available resources efficiently to achieve organizational goals. Because this set of stored data can generate countless insights about individuals, ethical concerns arise, and corporate policy makers should focus on how to cope with the very vital issues of privacy and securitization of data. A summary of the most important measured data and their potential ethical uses is provided in Table 7.1.

Table 7.1 Possible moral use of data

The manageability of sensitive data is very important in establishing an ethical business environment. There is a broad array of metrics to gather, whose use may have a positive or negative impact on both the corporation and the individuals. The analysis of data must be done through a process of moral good and used in the context of building ethical business policies reporting on organizational aims and performance. Data must not be used for personal advantage or for the benefit of third parties. Evaluation of data must be accurate, trustworthy, valuable, integral, credible, and accompanied by advanced ethical principles driven by internal morals, corporate standards, and societal demands. You must imagine yourself in the position of the individual when you analyze his or her data and treat employee data as you would treat your personal sensitive information.

Therefore, in terms of security and privacy, corporations must uphold the best methods and practices, while refreshing their terms and conditions regularly. The system must be multilayered and include innovative applications such as encryption or enhanced blockchain technology. Policy makers must explain how they collect, use, exploit, analyze, and share individuals’ data. Also, corporate policies must allow individuals to control the use of their data through transparent procedures and always seek permission for sharing information with third parties. Furthermore, corporate policies must include a comprehensive set of guidelines on how to minimize biases and inaccuracies, which may have unintended consequences for individuals and society. Thus, they must be aligned with social values and be responsible for potential data corruption.

For instance, any decision to modify personal data must be based on the individual’s consent, which should be provided in written form on paper or on electronic platforms. The employer must always be prepared to demonstrate, on request, that he or she has informed the employee, in accordance with law and ethics, and that the employee has the right of free choice, such as being able to refuse or withdraw consent, with no adverse consequences for him or her. Consent must be considered as a result of free choice, particularly where it is linked to a financial benefit to the employee or to the satisfaction of the employee under contract and labor law, collective bargaining and social security law, and the business ethics framework.

Another important example is the processing of personal data through a closed-circuit optical recording system within the workplace. This practice must be prohibited, considering that it violates human privacy and morals. Exceptionally, it could be permitted if necessary for the purpose of protecting persons and goods, and under specific circumstances by securing legal compliance. However, this implies that even if it is in the best interests of everyone at one place, individuals must be well informed and details must be provided as to what data has been gathered from authorities and corporate systems, for what reason, and how it will be exploited. In most cases, the law forbids data collected through a closed-loop optical recording system from being used as the sole criterion by which employee behavior and efficiency are evaluated.

Maximizing organizational performance through information management is essential for corporate success, as the effective analysis adds value to the decision- and policy-making process. The concept of performance measurement covers both what has been achieved and how it has been reached through resource exploitation. Data examination highlights possible barriers within business operations and individuals, while underlining utilization rates of resources and the strengths and weaknesses of each category of analyzed data. This process can be done with the support of key performance indicators (KPIs), which are regularly used to measure financial results and productivity. However, many corporations follow unethical policies aimed at bolstering efficiency, leading to the creation of poor working conditions and unrealistic corporate expectations. For instance, workers may be pushed to run and walk many hours or deal with injuries and unbearable fatigue, while having the time and speed of their movements and breaks measured for optimal efficiency. Also, some organizations unofficially equip workplaces with vending machines that provide stressed or injured workers with painkillers to meet their performance targets. These practices are both unethical and unpleasant for people, because they create an environment where human resources are exploited as mere tools, rather than being treated as valued entities with needs and demands.

E-Metrics and 360-Degree Ethics

Although technology presents great opportunities to advance, a key question arises: Why do we need to give so much attention to technological development and its relationship to business ethics? The answer is not simple. Technology enables the use of an extensive 360-degree feedback mechanism for all corporate procedures. This indicates that the human worker is not the only factor that can create value in business and society in general. Thus, 360-degree ethics relies on a multidimensional set of actions on how to retain ethics in a fast-paced globalized environment.

The 360-degree scheme is a relatively new and powerful feature of data management. Human resource information systems (HRIS) software presents the human resource function with new challenges (Dery, Grant, and Wiblen 2009). Advanced information systems have the capabilities to gather, analyze, and generate an enormous amount of data regarding anything that can be measured with quantitative and qualitative methods. They give practitioners a more rounded view of whatever they need to explore and evaluate. Thereby, they enhance the validity and acceptability of results, because the latter are rationally explained through data. The existence of such capable tools signifies that behaviors can be captured in the form of digital data as well. Consequently, the concentration of data constitutes an extremely effective tool for each corporation.

For instance, you can manage people with powerful software that gathers data such as the employee’s photo, last name, first name, job title, location, employment status, personal webpage and social media links, e-mail, and phone number. You can group the directory by filters such as name, department, location, or division, and you can always do a search to find, export, and analyze employee data. Also, it is very helpful and useful to review the employee list through organizational charts. Consequently, individuals, as employees, have their own profile page inside a human resources software. As a result, you can find a wealth of data about your employees, including personal information, such as name, preferred name, birth date and age, ethnicity, social security number and tax-related information, sex, gender, marital status, address, contact data, education, experience, and even their clothing size, for marketing and formal dress purposes. In addition, information is available about their direct reports and the name of the manager whom each employee is associated with.

Moreover, software provides solutions to gather data about hire date, employee comments over the employment status, job information, compensation and other benefits, frequency and history, time-off timeline and scheduling, notes in the context of what colleagues and supervisors say about his or her behavior or performance, upcoming training, and onboarding and offboarding tasks. Also, most software applications have cloud service options, in terms of storing résumés and applications, signed documents, personal documents, task lists, and workflow attachments. Individuals are also associated with corporate assets, such as a computer, a smartphone, a tablet, or a desk phone. Thus, electronic metrics (e-metrics) provide data such as asset description, serial numbers of devices, and date loaned or returned. Hiring tools are also available, allowing you to organize job openings, candidate ratings, hiring status such as candidates reviewed, offers made, interviews scheduled, or put on hold.

It should also be noted that because of technological innovation and flexible work environment, many corporations equip workers with mobile phones, tablets, or laptops, enabling them to connect to the internet for business purposes when they are not in the office. However, sometimes they ask them to install a range of software that track user’s movements. Such software can records users’ keyboard strokes and mouse movements, as well as the applications that they have open on their device screen. Some companies may ask for their workforce to even allow to install applications that take videos of users’ screen or even user’s face through the device camera to check if they are working.

In terms of biometric technologies and their ethical implications, an individual can be used as a unique identifier. This signifies that a human being can be characterized by a tag of recognition into the digital world of information. Biometric technologies refer to sensors and advanced systems used to identify individuals through a biometric. Biometric technologies use human-possessed biological (anatomical, physiological, and behavioral) properties to determine or verify an individual’s identity (Wang and Yanushkevich 2007). This feature can be extremely useful to corporations. Since the first industrial revolution, biometric technologies have been one of the most prominent developments in the history of organizational governance.

Concentrating information is a mandatory process to retain a competitive corporate advantage. By producing e-metrics, an organization can improve productivity, the well-being of employees, and reduce operational costs as well. Technology enables corporations to improve the quantity and quality of information stored and accelerate the analysis and processing of this information. It also offers flexibility of information gathering in terms of supporting business operations.

However, it should be noted that there are many negative implications of this technology. For instance, in the past it was difficult to store billions of sensitive data, such as human fingerprints, and tracking and storing billions of fingerprints was impossible. Now everyone submits their fingerprints through personal devices voluntarily, in terms of personal identification services. Thus, today, corporations can exploit technologies, such as smartphones and tablets, that are capable of fingerprint scanning. This process has made available to corporations and technological companies a huge amount of data that can either be beneficial or spell the end of human privacy. Fingerprint scanners are already a 360-degree metric instrument, capable of tracking human behavior. For example, fingerprint sensors can be found under the doorknob, on the steering wheel of a car, on the back of gear paddles, or in public transport and locations where people are welcome. Also, in recent decades, many big cities have already deployed sets of street cameras, governing not only traffic but also human behavior. Therefore, many ethical concerns related to storing sensitive data are arising, because personal information such as fingerprints are among the terms and conditions of smartphone device manufacturers and gigantic international corporations.

In addition, global positioning systems (GPS) trackers are precisely recording the movements of individuals. Technology can provide companies with embedded applications for tracking human beings, making it possible to implant a microchip under the human skin that can unlock doors, enable devices such as printers, or run other programmable tasks. Insertable technology reflects the need of the business world to exploit as much data as possible. Corporations store, control, and analyze an unprecedented amount of digital data and information about individuals, and not only during worktime. Systems can record the amount of time people spend on leisure, at home, or on the road. They can track meetings and even have embedded technologies such as microphones to provide complete information on conversations. Also, technologies such as cookies are found on the Internet that can create a comprehensive profile of an individual, thus making it possible to tap into users’ preferences on a variety of topics. A cookie is used for authenticating and tracking, as a mechanism that remembers the user’s movements, such as webpage preferences. For instance, social media platforms use such technologies to promote their interests and provide their services to the users for free, as a reward for interacting with the platform.

In terms of corporate measures, e-metrics are not only about finding suitable training for employees, about supporting the recruitment process, or noting payroll and expenses. The functions that an electronic platform can perform are limited only by its user capabilities. Software suppliers can provide corporate systems that are customizable, based on organizational needs. Furthermore, many corporations use both external software suppliers and internal developers to create unique modified features that are more competitive and exclusive in the market. Upgrades are always necessary in this process of keeping a system up to date, and the use of advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other information technology-related techniques of data analysis is mandatory. It is essential to note that the use and maintenance of a corporate system must be done very carefully, as detailed enterprise schemes integrate all data and processes of an organization into a unified system with the same database. This demonstrates that a system failure could have disastrous consequences, and in most cases this cannot be reversed. This could explain why a corporation may sometimes prefer to invest more in technology than in other traditional organizational expenses such as wages.

Measures and metrics require a multidimensional system with multilevel analysis. Specifically, workforce composition data, such as sex, gender, age, race, health, employment terms, and contract length, can be analyzed to the extent of workforce characteristics and assess corporate needs in terms of employment contracts and specific terms. Skills analysis is also very valuable, as information systems can sort and filter results in the context of certain skills, qualifications, degrees, and educational background of human resources. Furthermore, the experience level and portfolios created from individuals’ past employment relationships and outcomes can be a significant source of reference or comparison between individuals and candidates. Employee turnover rates and performance indicators can also be used in order to cope with shortfalls and issues such as number of vacancies as a percentage of total workforce, evaluate commitment level, compare actual with budgeted payroll and other costs, predict training needs and form development programs.

Each of the instruments mentioned must consider ethics as fundamental to creating a sustainable business environment, while the main mission of corporate policies must be the well-being of individuals. Metrics based on identification, authentication, or verification technologies are useful and practical. The expansion of the infrastructure of biometrics usage and capabilities indicates that corporate policies must develop methods of attracting individuals by providing 360-degree ethics. Technologies on information and data, such as biometric tools, must meet various requirements that governments and other regulators set for them. However, authorities develop practices about public technology and patents. This means they cannot pass rules on or control technologies that are at an experimental stage, undergoing testing processes by scientists and experts in the field, that have not yet been made available to the public.

Therefore, the ethical awareness of the creator of a technological innovation and implementation is critical. Policy makers must ensure security for technological adoption and exploitation of information. This is of crucial importance in regard to business ethics because conflicts arise between the interests of shareholders, the employees of a corporation, and the society in which the business operates. The moral entity consideration policy consists of an internal driving force to implement and develop ethical practices, as debates on the deployment and usage of data seem to be very difficult to reconcile in policy. Ethical standards and perspectives on such technologies can profoundly influence how data is exploited without harming other entities, and, thus, policy makers must take advantage of technological developments, while considering the interests of individuals that they affect.

It is worth noting that in the past, when the predictions for the widespread use of microchips were subject of intense criticism, everyone believed that technology will never reach the point at which it can be used against human privacy. However, although no one wanted to directly buy a microchip, everyone wanted to buy a mobile phone, making its adoption rate and usage even more critical for human health services. In particular, more households in developing countries own a mobile phone than have access to electricity or improved sanitation (The World Bank 2016). Furthermore, when consumers realized that they could not communicate without a mobile phone in their pockets, individuals became addicted to cell phones. Consequently, companies desiring to promote smartphones on the market found it easy to do so, because people kept buying these devices ignoring the serious threat to their personal data if the hardware and software providers could not meet their need for individual security and privacy.

Hence, is it wrong to adopt such technologies and exploit data analysis? No. E-metrics and biometric deployments can be extremely useful for both the corporation and employees, as well as for society in general. Problems are created when some individuals exploit technology over the rights of other people and entities. It is critical to create and develop sustainable legislative and operational infrastructure to enable rational technology usage, in the context of an international framework. At the same time, if regulation does not cover a technology yet, practitioners are responsible for its ethical exploitation. Data is used to make groups of individuals, to tag and categorize people according to a set of criteria, while advanced and intelligent systems record most of our routine. Therefore, practitioners must explore global practices and trends and consider ethical theories and implementations from multicultural concepts.

Confidential Ethical Systems

Ethical measurements and electronic information systems cannot ensure the universal development of confidential ethical systems. The morality of such mechanisms stems from human behavior. Hence, confidentiality can be developed only through human actions in terms of information exploitation. Confidential conflicts emerge since information about something has limits on how and when it can be disclosed to a third-party system. You need to be an authorized individual in order to have access to confidential information. Therefore, corporate policies must include strong moral guidelines on how to cope with ethical dilemmas related to information sharing and how to decrease the volume of conflicts between the rights of different individuals, given a set of conditions and situations.

Corporations pose complex confidentiality issues. This happens due to the amount of information gathered, stored, and shared within the corporate environment and operations. Professionals and, in general, businesspeople, whether they belong to the top or bottom level, have a moral obligation to protect the confidentiality of information. This is everyone’s fundamental moral duty and challenges the moral awareness of individuals. In particular, data confidentiality refers to the ability to share sensitive data among a community of users while respecting the privileges granted by the data owner to each member of the community, whereas data privacy means that the data owned by an individual will never be disclosed to anyone else; hence, because sharing is precluded by privacy, it is easier to enforce than confidentiality (Bouganim and Pucheral 2002). Therefore, practitioners and professionals who have access to databases also have access to private data and sensitive information. Corporate policies must ensure that their access points on information will not work against the right to privacy, because the process of keeping private information requires that the individuals involved be well informed about such practices.

Management of confidential information is not an easy task. Corporate fraud cases have been the main subject of criticism both inside and outside the business world, because it is believed that information along with money is more important and of greater worth than any other subject. Indeed, studies have found that executives who commit corporate fraud face greater financial incentives for doing so (Johnson, Ryan, and Tian 2009). However, what must happen to confidential information during legal proceedings or other circumstances such as criminal trials? Corporate policies must include a wide range of guidelines and avoid being accomplices to such conditions. Additionally, a global framework on such issues must be developed and updated. For instance, since the 1980s, practices suggest that U.S. law and practice concerning administrative and judicial disclosure of confidential business and governmental information in antidumping and countervailing duty cases would be ideal for adoption by the European Community (Taylor and Vermulst 1987). Thus, international law must cover a variety of cases, and corporate practices must adhere to the global law as well, where it fits.

There are a plethora of approaches that a policy maker can implement to conduct a comprehensive code of ethics on confidential information systems. Although there are some common principles, the standards governing corporate policies on confidential information and private data vary between entities. Some corporations have strict policies, and others implement more flexible schemes, given the continuous development of the field of information systems and privacy. Hence, even though the development of widely embraced ethical norms is a mandatory process, which all members of a corporation are required to adhere to, individuals tend to implement their own ethical standards on confidential information. Consequently, corporate policy makers must develop confidential guidelines as a matter of strong internal organizational policy, which no one is authorized to deviate from if the action is ruled by policy regulations.

Accordingly, if an individual discovers that his or her privacy has been breached, it is very difficult to develop trust and dignity among the same people. Leaked information can not only be painful in terms of personal psychology, pressure from public, and feelings that can change human behavior and perceptions, but it can also present legal consequences. If the principles of meritocracy, equality, and fairness in a corporation are under threat from information misuse, then, sooner or later, individuals could implement unethical practices to survive in an unsustainable environment. However, if the individual can afford the cost of leaving, then it is the only rational option, at least until the organization manages to implement another set of ethical principles.

Another great example of managing moral issues concerning confidential ethical systems is about genomic databases. In particular, the complexity of technology has required the rational management of information to be part of the workload of data scientists. This means that such progress and processing of data has enabled genotype analysis of individuals become a trend that it could be vital for the development of a series of corporations. A genotype is an individual’s collection of genes, whereas the expression of the genotype constitutes the individual’s observable traits, called the phenotype. The latter refers to traits such as blood type, height, or hair and eye color. The field of genomics generates data about the genome, as a set of genetic instructions found in a cell, and for a human it consists of 23 pairs of chromosomes. The short description of genomics presented is very important, as corporations could face a situation where biobank exploitation becomes inevitable. This implies that confidentiality about individual sensitive and private information is challenged, and it is critical to identify a clear relationship between different legal sources “where the impact of new technologies requires a coordinated approach to ethical and legal issues about informed consent, confidentiality, individual identity, discrimination, self-determination, the secondary use of samples and data, the return of results to the subject, and data sharing” (Mascalzoni 2015).

Thus, because human genomic data is uniquely identifiable, corporations may use them, and thus emerges ethical awareness. In particular, corporations may use such technologies of identification to ultimately control the access, sharing, and general management of sensitive data. Ethical issues emerge by the exponentially increasing volume and pace of genomic data collection in digital databases, because they can be converted into a coded electronic format for storage that is readable by every user. In some cases, you do not need to be a scientist or an individual with advanced biological knowledge in order to explore genomic databases, because the latter are expressed in such a way by data scientists and software applications that corporations and practitioners can use them for their interests easily. As statistical techniques improve alongside with the growth of databases, the association of genetic data with individual characteristics is a very powerful tool that corporations will be able to use in order to gain a competitive advantage and exploit their resources as efficiently as they can, to avoid any potential risks in information management.

Additionally, one of the most crucial ethical risks in data management is about the rules and procedures for allowing access to information. It is critical to set moral policies governing who should have access to that set of databases, under what conditions, and for what purpose, as already mentioned. For instance, if a corporation sells your private data as its client, in order to help a third entity to exploit your personal vulnerable dimensions, it raises critical ethical concerns. Imagine a company in the pharmaceutical industry that knows that most people in a specific town will have cardiac problems, due to special genetic conditions stemming from their biological ancestors in that area. This gives the corporation a huge competitive advantage, but at the same time it has followed unethical or even illegal practices in terms of data exploitation if people are not informed about the multidimensional use of their data, in accordance with the terms and conditions implemented by the corporation. Also, it is worth noting that the 2020 pandemic outbreak raised such concerns to a very high level, because the COVID-19 event occurred in a much more digitized and connected world where data quality and security controls are needed (Ienca and Vayena 2020).

Many organizations have been victims of their confidentiality policies. Technological giants such as companies in the social media industry or manufacturers of hardware have been found to implement such unethical practices. For instance, confidential issues include the leak of millions of e-mails and accounts from an e-mail provider and the leak or sale of private data such as demographic data, or even personal preferences on a variety of topics, or sensitive data such as personal text messages through applications and communication providers. In addition, a company may use data from its clients or business associates, in order to increase its competitiveness, or an organization may use unethical practices to reveal information that could be proved to work against the profitability and status of other corporations and competitors.

Apart from the foregoing, the leaked data can be used by external third-party entities or by individuals inside a corporation, as when an employee wants to learn something important about another individual, to gain an advantage such as a promotion, a bonus, or an achievement. Similarly, when a manager wants to promote someone, maybe from a personal preference and in order to cultivate a good interpersonal relationship with the individuals, even though there is another individual with greater attributes and contribution to the organizational performance. This practice of acting unethical and misusing confidential information is associated even with people with higher educational backgrounds and experience. A forgotten document on an office table could be enough to expose confidential information, and hence it is very difficult to avoid such circumstances entirely. Serving the best of personal interests could result in using confidential information against other people. Therefore, carefully thinking about the consequences is recommended before final action is taken, considering that interpersonal conflict may emerge from such activity.

Thus, people can control and prevent such inappropriate practices by paying more attention to the information systems and the moral awareness of their activity. Consequently, practitioners must minimize harm and approach ethical decision making systematically in order to protect the rights of individuals and develop an ethical, reasonable, and rational system on confidential information. It is essential to realize the moral issue; analyze what data, interests, values, and beliefs of individuals are likely to be affected; examine the benefits and risks of alternatives; and then implement the most suitable policy depending on conditions and variables of a situation.

It is not about the establishment of a general deontology that treats people as subject of principles and rules. Rather, corporate policies must inspire people to develop their own deontology in the context of personal and business ethics, their own sense of responsibility against other entities, regarding the consequences of their behavior, and whether they violate rules, rights, or law. It is important to implement strategies that prevent confidential leaks, even though in some cases confidential information is inevitable, due to the position of an individual, its weakness over ethical behavior, and the management of sensitive private data because of mandatory operations and business tasks.

Therefore, the existence of a code of ethics is crucial for business sustainability and the moral development of its employees. Categorizing behaviors into the ethically acceptable and the ethically unacceptable is a very demanding process, with many challenges, as explained in a previous chapter. In terms of confidential ethical systems, however, the implementation of the principles of a code of ethics is even more complex than in other common corporate operations. For instance, when an accountant realizes that a fraud case emerges considering specific corporate financial statements, or when an employee behaves unethically due to the relationship he or she developed with their manager, or when a company stores millions of electronic data with sensitive personal information such as online service platforms, data exploitation with the best of morals could be tough to achieve, though a mandatory process.

Concluding Remarks

Using advanced techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence that enable data scientists and professionals to harvest the available information in innovative ways is a compulsory corporate process in modern economics. Technological advances enable the management of information with multidimensional approaches, while emergent technologies can lead to many security and connectivity issues. Skewed data and technical limitations slow down human displacement in many business sectors; however, the owners or holders of information and technology as a combination of corporate excellence have a robust advantage against the competitors. Maximizing organizational performance through information management is essential for corporate success, as the effective analysis adds value to the decision- and policy-making process. Technology enables the use of an extensive 360-degree feedback mechanism for all corporate procedures. In terms of biometric technologies and their ethical implications, an individual can be used as a unique identifier. By using e-metrics, an organization can improve productivity and the well-being of employees and reduce operational costs. Additionally, insertable technology reflects the need of the business world to exploit as much data as possible, whereas corporations could be in a situation where biobank exploitation is inevitable. In any case, corporate policies must include a solid moral framework on how to cope with ethical dilemmas on information sharing and how to decrease the volume of conflicts between the rights of different individuals, given a set of conditions and situations. Corporate policy makers must develop confidential guidelines as a matter of strong internal organizational policy, from which no one is authorized to deviate.