Understanding the interrelationship of barriers towards business model re-engineering under the evolving privacy laws: an interpretive Structure Modelling approach

ABSTRACT Over the last half-decade or so, since 2015, data privacy has become an important concern for organizations and consumers alike. Rules and regulations associated with data protection and privacy have led to organizations often reorienting their business model and strategy. The purpose of this paper is to identify and derive the interrelationship between a set of barriers associated with the successful implementation of a business model under evolving privacy laws. The quantitative analysis of Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) is used to derive the relationship between the identified barriers. The study found that although industry and academic experts both discuss privacy by design as the guiding factors towards business re-engineering, cost, and unconscious violations are the actual driving barriers, making the design reactive rather than facilitative. Further, the study also found that while industry experts think most of the barriers are interlinked, including costs, academic experts seem to have a varied opinion, with most of them perceiving cost as an outcome of the design. The findings of the current study are expected to aid the legal cell of an organization in understanding the critical barriers associated with business model re-engineering under the evolving privacy laws and design their strategic plans accordingly.