Ethical and Legal Data Mining: Paradigms of Organizational Development Practitioners and Organizational Psychologists

In the process of data mining, techniques used, and results gathered, became ethically or even legally questionable due to the concern of the violation of individuals’ privacy when specific information is obtained, manipulated, and disseminated by other entities without an individual’s knowledge or consent. In other words, it is not the concern of what data is being mined, but more so regarding who is the miner of these data. This chapter is based on a review of the existing studies, which shows that not enough attention has been paid to the study of the “miner,” as well as the ethical and legal qualifications of the miner, from the perspectives of organizational development practitioners (OD) and organizational psychologists (OP) in approaching for certifying or licensing. During the review, several cases are being included to justify the certifying or licensing approach, thus upholding ethical data mining, especially in relation to the socio-economic development of a community, or county. This research concludes with a few practical recommendations for both data miner(s) and entities that are involved with data mining.