A note on ethical and legal considerations in MBA research methods practices

A note on ethical and legal considerations in MBA research methods practices

 

In the context of doing an MBA dissertation project, please provide 3 examples of legal considerations in research method practices and 3 examples of research ethics consideration in research method practices. Offer 2 examples that could be illegal but ethical and 2 examples that can be legal but not ethical in research method practices. My concern is that legal and ethical concerns are not always the same in MBA research methods practices.

 

You are right: legal compliance and research ethics overlap, but they are not identical. Law sets minimum enforceable requirements, while ethics asks whether the research is honest, fair, respectful, and non-exploitative; an action can therefore be legal but unethical, or illegal but ethically defensible.

Legal considerations in MBA research methods

1.    Data protection and privacy: If your dissertation collects personal data—such as employee names, job titles, customer details, or interview recordings—you may need a lawful basis for processing, secure storage, data minimisation, and clear information about retention and sharing. Under GDPR-style rules, consent must be freely given, specific, informed, unambiguous, and withdrawable.

2.    Confidentiality and non-disclosure obligations: If you interview staff or use company sales, HR, strategy, or customer data, you must respect employment contracts, NDAs, trade-secret protections, and any contractual restrictions on using organisational information. Even anonymised findings can create legal risk if small-sample details make individuals or commercially sensitive information identifiable.

3.    Intellectual property and copyright: You must properly license or cite copyrighted survey instruments, images, frameworks, company reports, database extracts, and software. Copying a proprietary questionnaire, scraping paid databases without permission, or reproducing substantial portions of a report without authorisation can breach copyright or licence terms.

Ethical considerations in MBA research methods

1.    Informed, voluntary participation: Participants should understand the study purpose, what data will be collected, risks, how findings will be used, and their right to decline or withdraw. Ethical consent is broader than a legal data-processing consent: it concerns autonomy, understanding, and freedom from pressure.

2.    Avoiding coercion and power imbalance: An MBA student interviewing subordinates, clients, suppliers, or employees should ensure participation is genuinely voluntary. For example, a manager should not imply that an employee’s career prospects depend on taking part in a workplace survey.

3.    Honesty, transparency, and fair credit: Researchers should report methods and findings accurately, avoid selective reporting or misleading visualisations, disclose conflicts of interest, and credit contributors appropriately. Failing to credit a major contributor can be unethical even where it is not unlawful.

Illegal but potentially ethical

Example	Why it may be illegal	Why it may still be ethically defensible
Covertly recording serious workplace wrongdoing to expose fraud, safety risks, or discrimination	Recording may breach consent, privacy, employment, or wiretapping rules depending on jurisdiction and context	The researcher may be acting to prevent harm, protect vulnerable people, or expose serious misconduct, provided the information is used proportionately and responsibly
Using a leaked internal document that reveals an organisation is hiding product-safety defects	The document may have been obtained or disclosed unlawfully, and using it could breach confidentiality or trade-secret law	If the public-interest harm is substantial and the researcher verifies and reports it responsibly, disclosure may be ethically justified despite its legal risk

These are illustrations, not recommendations: in a dissertation, you should normally seek university ethics approval and legal advice before handling such material.

Legal but potentially unethical

Example	Why it may be legal	Why it may still be unethical
Pressuring friends, relatives, or employees to complete a survey	It may not violate data-protection or contract law if participation is technically voluntary and data handling is lawful	It undermines voluntary consent, exploits power or personal relationships, and can produce biased data. Coercive recruitment is a classic unethical-but-legal research practice.
Omitting a major contributor from authorship or acknowledgements	Copyright and employment law may not require recognition in every circumstance	It violates fairness, honesty, and academic integrity; ethical norms are broader than legal duties.

Practical implication for your dissertation

Treat legal review and ethical review as separate checks. Before fieldwork, prepare a participant information sheet and consent form covering purpose, data collected, storage, withdrawal rights, anonymity limits, and intended use; then obtain approval from your university’s ethics committee and, where relevant, your organisation’s data-protection or compliance team.