RT Article
T1 Is Your Banker Leaking Your Personal Information? The Roles of Ethics and Individual-Level Cultural Characteristics in Predicting Organizational Computer Abuse
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 121
IS 3
SP 385
OP 401
A1 Lowry, Paul Benjamin
A1 Posey, Clay
A1 Roberts, Tom L.
A1 Bennett, Rebecca J.
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2014
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1785650793
AB Computer abuse (CA) by employees is a critical concern for managers. Misuse of an organization’s information assets leads to costly damage to an organization’s reputation, decreases in sales, and impositions of fines. We use this opportunity to introduce and expand the theoretic framework proffered by Thong and Yap (1998) to better understand the factors that lead individuals to commit CA in organizations. The study uses a survey of 449 respondents from the banking, financial, and insurance industries. Our results indicate that individuals who adhere to a formalist ethical perspective are significantly less likely to engage in CA activities than those following a utilitarian ethical framework. In addition, the results provide evidence that employees with individualistic natures are linked to increased CA incidents, whereas collectivist tendencies are associated with decreases in CA behaviors. Our results also show that collectivism acts as a strong moderator that further decreases the relationships between formalism and CA, and utilitarianism and CA. Finally, we offer detailed suggestions on how organizations and researchers can leverage our findings to decrease CA occurrences.
K1 Individualism
K1 Collectivism
K1 Utilitarianism
K1 Teleological evaluations
K1 Organizational security
K1 information security
K1 Formalism
K1 Ethics
K1 Deontological evaluations
K1 computer abuse
K1 Culture
DO 10.1007/s10551-013-1705-3