Information Privacy in the Service Sector: An Exploratory Study of Health Care and Banking Professionals

Abstract

Service industries, such as health care and banking, process large amounts of sensitive customer data in their daily transactions. The information obtained from this data frequently supports the competitive strategies of organizations while concurrently causing uncertainty and concern from the customer. Furthermore and given the service orientation of these data, poor data quality can result in extensive social and economic impacts. As a result, data practices and the employees who process the data must be managed in a cautious and thorough manner to thwart any privacy violations. This article explores employees' privacy orientation in their respective sector, health care or banking, through a parsimonious 15-item instrument. Our results indicate that health care professionals are largely concerned about errors in patient information whereas banking professionals are concerned about improper access of customer information—thereby suggesting differences in perceived privacy practices among these 2 service sectors. Several explanations are offered for the concerns that surfaced from the 2 groups. Therefore, our results build on a data quality hierarchical framework consisting of accuracy, appropriate amount of data, accessibility, and access security. Our results hold public policy, legal, and security implications to the managerial staff at both health care and banking organizations. To date, there has been little research that gives substantial insight into the privacy practices of service industry workers, such as banking and health care employees. In this article, we discuss the implications of these findings and suggest directions for future research.