Overcoming Trusting Barriers in Inter-organizational Identity Theft Prevention in Knowledge Sharing: A Case of UK Retailing Industry

Inter-organizational knowledge sharing basically connects two or more firms with one another in exchange relationship for skills, expertise and knowledgeable personnel. Knowledge plays a key role in organizational performance but it is given a very little attention in terms of information security and requires addressing security concerns due to following reasons: First, because retailing is the most victimized channel due to online trade. Second, if organizational criminal wings can compromise the information system of one firm, they can attack other firms too. Hence, identity theft is a collective problem. A security breach is among the top three business stories and identity theft is the key reason why it occurs in online retailing. Identity theft is a serious issue of society at a large and its prevention requires knowledge sharing by several actors. Through different case studies, interviews and theoretical and empirical analysis, this study highlights some unknown side of prevention collaboration in the retail industry in the United Kingdom (UK) which is of theoretical and practical importance. This paper theoretically furthers our understanding of how communication of organizations with comparable goals is handled differently in information security management. Practically, it evaluates relationships of retailing firms, online fraud forums and law enforcement departments in the fraud prevention process. Our research outlines how retailers' partnerships with different stakeholders will help them solve and reduce identity theft by presenting a structure for inter-organizational fraud prevention in retailing organizations.