Social impact of Business. Individual rights versus corporate concerns

The Social impact of Business
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Individual rights versus corporate concerns
The idea that the right to privacy is a basic human right is not a novel one; however, massive technological, economic and sociological changes are shifting both legal and personal conceptualizations of a citizen's right to privacy (Smith and Burg, 2012, p. 9). The ramifications of this right are negotiated in various interconnected spheres of social life, and debates pertaining to it often invoke notions of ‘accountability' and ‘trust'. Although workplace surveillance by closed circuit cameras has been legitimated by employers as a means to discourage employees against theft, the visibility afforded to employees is taking more covert and insidious forms (Smith and Burg, 2012). Internet-based activities and e-mail communication can easily be monitored, in spite of personal passwords set by individual employees (Smith and Burg, 2012, p. 2). This contestation of privacy stems from an employees' “concern for personal information” as identified by Ball, Daniel and Stride (2012); however, “a subject's ability to control access to their body, and to share confidential matters with trusted others” is also compromised during mandated “medical examinations, polygraphs and honesty tests” (p. 378).
The researchers note that privacy issues of “body integrity and intimacy” are routinely neglected by scholars yet biometric measures are emerging in the workplace (Ball, Daniel and Strid...