Ethical transformation and legal boundaries of economic intelligence

Abstract

Within the framework of this article, the authors considered the issue of economic intelligence in modern conditions. Against the backdrop of the economic confrontation between Western countries and Russia, it becomes obvious that the concept of economic intelligence is changing, manifesting itself in several planes at the same time, and corporate confrontation is moving to the level of protecting national interests. According to the authors, the factors affecting the perception of the methods of corporate confrontation are subject to change. Based on the assumption that the methods and tactics of economic intelligence are not static, the authors in this study set himself the task of determining the factors that influence their ethical perception. The study provides an opinion that the transformation of approaches to understanding ethical behavior and the very definition of ethical behavior in economic intelligence is directly related to the technological aspect, the transition of many business processes to the digital plane. The authors focus on the fact that in the conditions of cyberspace the psychological perception of illegal actions changes significantly. Commitment to ethical behavior may naturally decrease due to the lack of personal contact between the agent of influence and the source. At the same time, in practice, the boundary separating ethical and unethical methods of conducting competitive intelligence remains very unclear, which creates additional difficulties in countering such methods. In the final part of the article, the authors formulate a conclusion regarding the most common threats to which corporate data is exposed, as well as the role of economic intelligence in ensuring the security of an organization.