Exploring Archetypes of Value Co-Destructive Privacy Practices

Christian Kurtz, Pascal Vogel, Martin Semmann

Abstract: Personal data is a critical resource to tailor digital services to the context of use and the preferences of individual users. Services have the characteristic that users and providers no longer interact in a dyadic relationship but rather in service systems co-creating value. Here, actors can provoke adverse effects that result from misaligned or destructive behavior. In service research, value co-destruction emerged as a perspective to study such undermined value co-creation. We use this lens in the case of information privacy as an example of a normative value. Building on a multi-case analysis of information privacy violations reported in the news, we elucidate seven archetypes of value co- destruction. These archetypes enable an understanding of underlying conceptions and mechanisms of actor arrangements that inhibit the holistic consideration of normative values such as information privacy in digital services.