Individual privacy and computer-based human resource information systems

✍ Scribed by G. Stephen Taylor; J. Stephen Davis

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 744 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-4544
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00382934

✦ Synopsis

After all, personnel expenses -wages, benefits, training, and the like -can account for over 50% of a firm's total operating expense (Milkovich and Glueck, 1985). Yet an organization's human work force frequently is its least well-managed resource (Cascio, 1987). One way organizations are attempting to control such expenses is through the computerization of the personnel function (Nyweide, 1987). Indeed, Kustoff (1985) estimates that by 1995 every company with at least 100 employees will use computers to help manage its workforce.

Probably the most common computer aid for personnel management is the human resource information system (HRIS). This system allows the organization to combine personnel data (e.g. employee age, sex, education, pay rates) into a single information database. The HRIS not only produces timely and accurate information about the workforce, but also serves as a control mechanism, as an aid in personnel planning, forecasting, recruiting, and selection, as well as providing the firm a global view of its human resources (Juris, 1986;Lederer, 1984).

Although clearly warranted from a cost-control perspective, the increased computerization of the personnel function entails questions of both societal and individual ethics. Utilitarian theories of ethics (Cavanagh et al., 1981) define an unethical act or decision as one which leads to personal gain at the expense of society's gain (Fritzsche and Becket, 1984). It may be that automated databases, in some senses, benefit the firm yet harm the larger social sphere. Cordell (1987) argues that when linked with other such systems, these databases may create conditions in which private acts become public knowledge. This threat may lead to a society in which people are less willing to take risks for fear that such behaviors may become part of some