Impact Analysis of Organizational Structure of Group Companies on Privacy Policies

Privacy issues within subsidiary companies can significantly impact the overall trust in a group of companies. Therefore, it is important to address privacy concerns and establish privacy governance across the entire group, including the parent and subsidiary companies. However, the assessment of the actual state of privacy governance within a group from an external perspective remains challenging. In this study, we have analyzed the publicly disclosed privacy policies of the parent and subsidiary companies within a group and compared the results to investigate the practical implementation of privacy governance. The similarity in legal compliance was examined based on the policies of 901 group companies and several influencing factors were identified, such as organizational structure and the number of companies within the group. Specifically, we observed a decrease in similarity with an increase in the number of companies and complexity of the organizational structure. Moreover, companies with lesser similarities belonged to industries handling personal information and having fewer employees.