Information Privacy: Implementation and Perception of Laws and Corporate Policies by CEOs and Managers

In the Web dependent world, companies must respect and protect individuals’ information privacy. Companies develop and implement corporate information privacy policies to comply with the domestic and international information privacy laws and regulations. This paper investigates: (a) the approach used by multinational and domestic companies to develop and implement corporate information privacy policies; and (b) the perception of corporate managers/professionals toward information privacy legislation and secondary use of personally identifiable information (PII) that organizations collect. A survey was conducted to collect data from corporate CEOs, managers, and technical professionals of national and multinational companies. Findings indicate the following: 1) Views regarding the practicality and effectiveness of information privacy legislations are similar for respondents from the national and multinational companies. 2) Respondents are undecided about whether the privacy laws of the United States and foreign countries are equally restrictive. 3) Multinational companies do not favor developing and implementing uniform information privacy policies or different information privacy policies across countries of operations. 4) Respondents strongly agreed that unauthorized secondary use of personal information is unacceptable.