Assessing IT Students’ Intentions to Commit Unethical Actions

ABSTRACT

With the increased volume of and access to electronically held assets, ethical behavior of information technology (IT) professionals is critical. The importance of ethical behavior in the workplace has emphasized the need for coverage of ethics in IT-related academic programs. To better understand how academic IT programs support the teaching of ethics, this study examines people’s desires and intentions to act ethically within specific IT-related contexts by developing a survey. These contexts, derived from industry codes of conduct, include intellectual property rights (IPR), software piracy (SWP), and privacy (PR). Hypotheses are developed and tested based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and dual process cognitive models. The results show that people’s intent to behave ethically with IT decreases their intentions to behave unethically with IPR and SWP and that people’s desire to behave ethically with IT decreases their intentions to behave unethically with IPR and PR.

KEYWORDS:

• IT ethics
• IT misuse
• ethical behavior
• dual process models
• professional development