A Proposed IT Ethical Behavioral Model - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 7

Table 1. continued

Ethical Issue Research Factors that Influence

Intention

Reference
Theories

Method Results

Ethical behavior in
organizations

Trevino
(1986)

Individual moderators
Ego strength, locus of
control
Field dependence
Situational moderators
Job content
Organizational culture
Characteristics of work

Moral
Development
Stages (Kolberg)

Conceptual Only Proposes the use of

organizational culture
as a variable affecting
ethical behavior in an
organization

Privacy, accuracy,
ownership, access

Cronan,
Leonard, and
Kreie (2005)

Attitude
Individual Characteristics
(sex, age)
Perceived Importance

Theory of
Reasoned Action
Theory of Planned
Behavior
Perceived
Importance

Multiple
Regression
Factor Analysis

R 2 = .41 to .53
Intention is influential
of attitude, perceived
importance, age, and
sex

tention influences actual behavior. Various other
studies of behavior directly, or indirectly through
intention to behave, have supported that the other
factors in the proposed conceptual model signifi-
cantly influence behavior. The model provides a
synthesis of many important findings in ethical
behavior research.
The preliminary meta-analysis of the ethics
literature (Table 1) leads to a proposed conceptual
model for general ethical behavior (Figure 1). The
core of the proposed model is based on the TPB
(Ajzen, 1991), that is, attitude, subjective norms,
and perceived behavioral control intention which
in turn explains behavior (illustrated in Figure 1).
With that as a core, the model hypothesizes that
general factors (attitude, culture, ego strength,
equity, environment, locus of control, moral obli-
gation, past piracy behavior, perceived behavioral
control, perceived normative beliefs, and subject

norms) influence intention to behave which leads
to the actual behavior. Further, it is hypothesized
that an individual's moral judgment, individual
attributes, affective beliefs, Machiavellianism,
importance, cost, and punishment influences at-
titude and that equity (fairness) is composed of
three factors of reciprocal fairness, distributive
fairness, and procedural fairness. Model develop-
ment is supported as follows:

• Intention and behavior: Theory of rea-

soned action and rheory of planned behavior
- Ajzen (1991), Ajzen and Fishbein (1977,
1982), Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)

• Attitude: Ajzen (1991), Al-Rafee and Cro-

nan (2005), Banerjee et al. (1998), Cronan
and Al-Rafee (2007), Cronan et al. (2005),
Peace