Exploring national identification programs among web‐enabled professionals
| Pages | 455-477 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635570810868335 |
| Published date | 25 April 2008 |
| Date | 25 April 2008 |
| Author | Alan D. Smith |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Exploring national identification
programs among web-enabled
professionals
Alan D. Smith
Department of Management and Marketing, Robert Morris University,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management a sense of importance
in providing a balance between providing customer service and still safeguarding personal identity
through a national identity program.
Design/methodology/approach – A review of the applied literature on national identity programs
and a personal interview of 252 professional and semi-professional people was conducted,
representative of the service industries located in the metropolitan section of Pittsburgh, PA.
Findings – Via multiple linear regression,
x
2
, and factor analysis, virtually all the basic personal
information and customer relationship management (CRM)-related tenets of benefits with identity
program, global security concerns, technology enabled, personal identity concerns, standardization
concerns, wealth and education factors, cost of capita, online experiences, and confront with personal
information, were found be statistically significant and positively related to the degree of invasion of
privacy factor.
Practical implications – Although, there are many beneficial reasons why national identity
programs should be implemented, such as security, convenience, and enhancing CRM-related
strategies, the vast majority of citizens have many fears and feel there are too many risks involved.
Originality/value – Few empirical studies existing in the literature, especially from a business
perspective concerning national identity initiatives. These issues regarding national identification
cards and CRM were addressed through exploratory data reduction analyses. Although, there were
several significant and negative issues associated with implementation, in general, if citizens are better
educated about the benefits of a national identification card they are more willing to adopt it and pay
for the program.
Keywords Customer relations, Data security, Biometrics, Identification,Government policy
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Balances between CRM and security initiatives
Technology is constantly growing, modernizing and revolutionizing the way people
conduct their daily lives. From complicated to even the simplest of tasks, technology is
being designed to make life simpler, faster and more efficient. Owing to the constant
use of new technology, companies and managers have taken matters into their own
hands and began working with customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
Ultimately, for better or worst, in such a society were an individual’s personal identity
has the potential to be electronically tied to their product and service histories for each
transaction; as suggested by Beynon-Davies (2006, 2007) each individual’s
accumulation personal identifiers for such intangible and tangible services will be
captured for better management and customer support. These critical customer
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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National
identification
programs
455
Received 7 July 2007
Revised 20 December 2007
Accepted 25 January 2008
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 108 No. 4, 2008
pp. 455-477
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/02635570810868335
support identifiers are integral part of any fully functional CRM system. In terms of
physical representations of such multiple personal identifiers may take the form
debit/credit cards, retail advantage cards, driving licenses, passports, library cards,
college campus identification cards, automatic toll road identification, to name a few.
The movement to the adoption of a government-based identification card has
especially sparked debate in the USA, although there are a number of successful
applications in the military and or enterprises that command certain levels of security.
The major purpose of this study is to help understand the dynamics involved in
establishing a balance between providing customer service and safeguarding personal
identity through a national identity program.
CRM has been usedsuccessfully to help companiestrack and strengthen relationships
withtheir customers and, ultimately,boost revenues and decreasemarketing costs (Chong
and Wong, 2005; Heizer and Render, 2006; Rigby and Ledingham, 2004; Smith 2004a, b,
2005, 2006a,b, c; Smith and Lias, 2005). Withthe constant thirst for knowledgeand desire
to make use of the latest forms of technological changes, companies and consumers are
expanding their way of thinking and becoming more open to new possibilities.
Governmental agencies are taking advantagesof new CRM initiatives and attempting to
make social services morecustomer-friendly.
Unfortunately, along with the many positive aspects of increasing knowledge and
technology that can be put to good use, there is a number of individuals who use it for
destructive purposes, such as identity theft (Paul, 2006), invasion of privacy, providing
fake identification documents to minors, and promoting illegal immigration for a profit,
and many other types of fraud. The manipulation of unsuspecting members of society,
coupled with the power of CRM’s impressive information technology (IT) capabilities
(Urbach and Kibel, 2004) must and can be prevented by allowing technological
advancements to be utilized to their full extent in the form of a safer, more secure,
national identification card program (NICP).
Combining the advancements in technology using biometrics (Heracleous and
Wirtz, 2006) and smart cards to implement a NICP has become a controversial issue in
CRM research. Although there are a number of skeptics that such large-scale databases
and proper levels of security and privacy can be maintained, there are a numb er of
potential problems that must be solved before governmental agencies can truly
implement a NICP that can be assessable at various levels. Hopefully, with the help of
the latest technology and security protocols, strategies that implement CRM-related
services will be available to the public (as graphically shown in Figure 1).
Promoting acceptability of national identity programs
CRM-related practices. With the use of CRM-related practices, companies can effectively
market products that consumers desire to increase revenue, attract and retain customer
loyalty, and maintain competitive advantage while reducing marketing costs. The
businessesthat are using CRM successfully devisehighly-focused projects thatnarrowly
define what problems they are trying to solve within their customer relationship cycle.
CRM cannot do a full range of functions at one time, yet is essentially used to complete
smaller targeted tasks (Rigby and Ledingham, 2004; Smith, 2002, 2005). According to
Rigby and Ledingham (2004), there are four questions that all companies should ask
themselveswhen initiating CRM research;namely is it strategic, where does it hurt,do we
need perfect data, and where do we go from here? Once these questions have been
IMDS
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