Modeling IT ethics: a study in situational ethics
MIS Quarterly
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The recent wave of high profile corporate ethical failures, as well as ethical issues surrounding information technologies and users of those technologies, raises questions about the limits that an IT professional will tolerate and accept as normalized behavior. Consideration as to what is normalized behavior within the organizational ethical climate is an important aspect of corporate ethics, in that beliefs about the organizational ethical climate fit are theorized to have effects on both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In order to account for both the situational and moral components of the individual's beliefs about the ethical climate, the study operationalizes the IT professional's ethical climate "fit," the individual's beliefs about their "fit" with the organizational ethical climate. Social Cognitive Theory was used as a foundation for the research model. Development and refinement of the instrumentation was accomplished using expert evaluators and qualitative discussion groups. The instrument was administered to a small sample of undergraduate students, and the final phase of the pilot test (n = 63) was conducted to pre-validate the instrument and research model using path analysis procedure. The pilot test results appear to indicate that both the instrumentation and research model possess positive characteristics that support their pre-validation, and hence, their usefulness for subsequent research. These findings may represent an early assessment of an emerging awareness in corporate ethics, and therefore of considerable value both to researchers and practitioners. It is the intent of the authors to pursue this line of inquiry with a primary data collection effort to support an expanded research model.