IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jomega/v37y2009i6p1063-1072.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethical issues in tracking cellular telephones at an event

Author

Listed:
  • Cooper, Antony K.
  • Ittmann, Hans W.
  • Stylianides, Theo
  • Schmitz, Peter M.U.

Abstract

Early in 2007, the CSIR conducted an experiment to track the cellular telephones of a small group of people as they moved to and from an event, to test the viability of using such tracking to provide the participants with useful traffic information. This project raised a number of ethical issues, which prompted this paper and which we discuss here. These include: - the ethics of modelling data, including the treatment of research participants; - privacy and surveillance issues related to tracking the movement of people; - the risks inherent in being tracked vs the benefits of being tracked; and - the ethics related to sending messages to drivers. We have reviewed the literature on ethics and used the results to assemble a check list of relevant ethical issues, adding a few of our own (i.e. a deontological ethics approach), against which the conduct of this research project was assessed. We also provide an overview of the experiment and the results obtained.

Suggested Citation

  • Cooper, Antony K. & Ittmann, Hans W. & Stylianides, Theo & Schmitz, Peter M.U., 2009. "Ethical issues in tracking cellular telephones at an event," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1063-1072, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:6:p:1063-1072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-0483(08)00142-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brans, J. Pierre, 2002. "OR, Ethics and Decisions: the OATH of PROMETHEUS," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 191-196, July.
    2. Brans, J. Pierre, 2002. "Ethics and decision," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(2), pages 340-352, January.
    3. Gallo, Giorgio, 2004. "Operations research and ethics: Responsibility, sharing and cooperation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(2), pages 468-476, March.
    4. Editors The, 2007. "From the Editors," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-5, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kleijnen, Jack P.C., 2011. "Ethical issues in engineering models : An operations researcher's reflections," Other publications TiSEM 88caba9e-1d78-47d7-9a0b-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Ormerod, Richard J. & Ulrich, Werner, 2013. "Operational research and ethics: A literature review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 291-307.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean-Pierre Brans & Giorgio Gallo, 2007. "Ethics in OR/MS: past, present and future," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 165-178, September.
    2. Ormerod, Richard J. & Ulrich, Werner, 2013. "Operational research and ethics: A literature review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 291-307.
    3. Marc Le Menestrel & Luk N. Wassenhove, 2016. "Subjectively biased objective functions," EURO Journal on Decision Processes, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 4(1), pages 73-83, June.
    4. Mingers, John, 2011. "Ethics and OR: Operationalising discourse ethics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(1), pages 114-124, April.
    5. Diekmann, Sven, 2013. "Moral mid-level principles in modeling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 132-138.
    6. Costa, Alysson M. & Miralles, Cristóbal, 2009. "Job rotation in assembly lines employing disabled workers," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 625-632, August.
    7. Meinard, Y. & Cailloux, O., 2020. "On justifying the norms underlying decision support," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 285(3), pages 1002-1010.
    8. Richard John Ormerod, 2021. "Pragmatism in professional practice," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(6), pages 797-816, November.
    9. Behzadian, Majid & Kazemzadeh, R.B. & Albadvi, A. & Aghdasi, M., 2010. "PROMETHEE: A comprehensive literature review on methodologies and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 198-215, January.
    10. Le Menestrel, Marc & Van Wassenhove, Luk N., 2009. "Ethics in Operations Research and Management Sciences: A never-ending effort to combine rigor and passion," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1039-1043, December.
    11. Eloi Laurent, 2010. "Environmental justice and environmental inequalities: A European perspective," Working Papers hal-01069412, HAL.
    12. Laurent, Catherine E. & Berriet-Solliec, Marielle & Kirsch, Marc & Labarthe, Pierre & Trouve, Aurelie, 2010. "Multifunctionality Of Agriculture, Public Policies And Scientific Evidences: Some Critical Issues Of Contemporary Controversies," APSTRACT: Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce, AGRIMBA, vol. 4(1-2), pages 1-6.
    13. Juan Carlos Conesa & Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2007. "Modeling great depressions: the depression in Finland in the 1990s," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 31(Nov), pages 16-44.
    14. Adilson Carlos Yoshikuni & José Eduardo Ricciardi Favaretto & Alberto Luiz Albertin & Fernando de Souza Meirelles, 2022. "How can Strategy-as-Practice Enable Innovation under the Influence of Environmental Dynamism?," RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), ANPAD - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração, vol. 26(1), pages 200131-2001.
    15. Paola Gatti & Chiara Ghislieri & Claudio G Cortese, 2017. "Relationships between followers’ behaviors and job satisfaction in a sample of nurses," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(10), pages 1-16, October.
    16. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09hi4ijb1r1 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Premand, Patrick & Brodmann, Stefanie & Almeida, Rita & Grun, Rebekka & Barouni, Mahdi, 2016. "Entrepreneurship Education and Entry into Self-Employment Among University Graduates," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 311-327.
    18. D. K. Choudhury, 2019. "Standard Critical Path and Selection of Most Economic and Quality Contractors for Construction of Thermal Power Plant: A Case Study in NTPC," Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research, , vol. 18(2), pages 103-118, December.
    19. Ayanlade Ayansina & Olugbade Adeoye Nathaniel & Babatimehin Oyekanmi, 2013. "Intra-annual climate variability and malaria transmission in Nigeria," Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, Sciendo, vol. 21(21), pages 7-19, September.
    20. Timothy B Smith & Connor Workman & Caleb Andrews & Bonnie Barton & Matthew Cook & Ryan Layton & Alexandra Morrey & Devin Petersen & Julianne Holt-Lunstad, 2021. "Effects of psychosocial support interventions on survival in inpatient and outpatient healthcare settings: A meta-analysis of 106 randomized controlled trials," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(5), pages 1-25, May.
    21. V. Vandenberghe & F. Waltenberg & M. Rigo, 2013. "Ageing and employability. Evidence from Belgian firm-level data," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 111-136, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:6:p:1063-1072. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/375/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.