The impact of perceived privacy risks on organizations’ willingness to share item-level event data across the supply chain

When information is available about the path, on which individual items move through the real world, many beneficial applications can be designed. The necessary data can be generated through attaching identifiers to items and deploying suitable readers all over the supply chain that capture the information on the identifiers. Organizations only have access to data about item movements within their organizational boundaries. Therefore sharing of data between organizations is required to gain full visibility. However, the willingness of organizations to share data is considered to be low. In this paper we present the results of a study that aimed at investigating the actual willingness of companies to share item-level data and at exploring the perceived privacy risks that may restrain companies from sharing item-level data. From the findings, requirements for the design of inter-organizational data sharing infrastructures are derived.