Addressing the privacy paradox on the organizational level: review and future directions

The discrepancy between informational privacy attitudes and actual behaviour of consumers is called the “privacy paradox”. Researchers across disciplines have formulated different theories on why consumers’ privacy concerns do not translate into increased protective behaviour. Over the past two decades multiple differing explanations for the paradox have been published. However, authors generally agree that companies are in a strong position to reduce consumers’ paradoxical behaviour by improving their customers’ informational privacy. Hence, this paper aims at answering the question: How can companies address the privacy paradox to improve their customers’ information privacy? Reviewing a sample of improvement recommendations from 138 papers that explore 41 theories in total, we determined that companies can generally align their privacy practices more closely with customers’ expectations across 4 inter-connected managerial processes: (1) strategic initiatives, (2) structural improvements, (3) human resource management, and (4) service development. The findings of this systematic literature review detail how companies can address both the rational and irrational nature of the privacy decision-making process. Furthermore, we propose a dynamic model able to identify weaknesses and strengths in companies’ privacy orientation.