Situational inuences on ethical decision-making

in an IT context
Russell Haines
a,
*
, Lori N.K. Leonard
b
a
Information Technology and Decision Sciences, College of Business and Public Administration,
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, United States
b
Department of Management Information Systems, College of Business Administration,
University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK 74104, United States
Received 10 September 2005; received in revised form 7 September 2006; accepted 7 February 2007
Available online 25 February 2007
Abstract
Processes of ethical decision-making are thought to depend on the issue faced when making the decision. We examined the
processes by examining students reactions to ve scenarios involving ITuse. Data were collected using a questionnaire following a
group discussion. The results showed that ethical decision-making processes did indeed vary by scenario, suggesting that a single-
issue approach is inadequate for studying ethical decision-making. Perceived importance of the ethical issue was a factor in the
scenarios, but it did not have an all-inclusive inuence on the decision-making of the participants. The results were considered in the
context of theories and Masons ethical issues of the information age. We offer advice to managers on how to limit unethical
behavior.
# 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: IT ethics; Ethical decision-making; Ethical behavior; Perceived importance; Four-component model; Moral intensity
1. Introduction
Ethical issues are particularly important in IT today,
with widespread illegal use of intellectual property,
violation of privacy, and breaches in security. The rapid
development and deployment of IT has outpaced the
development of ethical guidelines for its use [16]. The
2003 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey
found that disgruntled employees ranked just below
independent hackers and above competitors as likely
sources of attack [23]. One survey noted that 80% of all
computer- and Internet-related crimes against corpora-
tions are committed by individuals from within, causing
an average of $110,000 per corporate victim [5], while
another found that 78% of organizations have had to
discipline employees for downloading pornography,
pirated software, or misusing e-mail [18]. A survey
found that nearly 30% of business people could be
classied as pirating software through electronic
methods [26]. Because of their control of networks,
IT systems administrators are a serious insider threat
[19].
Studies of ethical decision-making generally search in
one of two directions: either examining demographic and
personality styles of individuals who indicate that they
judge a given behavior as immoral (e.g., [4,8,12,20]) or
examining the process of ethical decision-making to
nd beliefs and attitudes that lead to unethical behavior
[29], relegating individual differences to being external
www.elsevier.com/locate/im
Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 757 683 5841;
fax: +1 757 683 5639.
E-mail address: rhaines@odu.edu (R. Haines).
0378-7206/$ see front matter # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.im.2007.02.002
variables [21]. Models in the second area are exemplied
by a four-component model of moral behavior [22] and
the theory of planned behavior [1], which has been a
popular model for ethical decision-making. However,
studies generally focused on decision-making about a
single ethical dilemma in spite of an understanding that
different factors affect decision-makingacross situations.
Few studies except those of Robin et al. [24] and Loch
and Conger [15] have compared the decision-making
processes that individuals use when making ethical
decisions about multiple scenarios. We therefore decided
to examine how ethical decision-making processes of
individuals differed when faced with different situations
in the use of IT.
2. Theoretical background
This study uses a four-component model of ethical
decision-making (Fig. 1). This sees ethical decision-
making as a sequential decision-making process. In
recognition of a moral issue, a decision maker engages
in an ethical decision-making process rather than
making a decision based on emotional or other grounds.
This prompts the person to make a moral judgment.
Then the decision maker chooses a course of action to
establish moral intent. Finally, the person will engage in
moral behavior based on the moral intent. In the
process, social norms and individual differences are
implicit but external factors. Moral judgment has been
shown to inuence moral intent, as have age, gender,
and other demographic differences.
Our intent was to determine how decision makers
perceptions of ethical situations affected the two central
components of the model: making a moral judgment
and establishing moral intent. A relationship between
them had been conrmed in many studies (e.g., [2]). We
postulated:
Hypothesis 1. Moral judgment of a behavior will be a
positive indicator of moral intent.
Several theories have extended the four-component
model with additional precedents that explain how
moral judgment and/or establishing moral intent are
formed. The one most relevant to our study of different
situations was enunciated by Jones [10], who added a
situation-based construct, moral intensity, which cap-
tures the extent of issue-related moral imperative in a
situation. It depends on attributes of the situation and
is expected to increase with increase of consequences of
an act, the probability of the act affecting others, and the
decision maker being close to those affected by the
action. Jones was unclear, however, about the stages
affected and whether moral intensity had a mediating or
moderating role.
Robin et al. developed a measure of moral intensity
that they termed perceived importance of an ethical
issue. Perceived importance reects a decision makers
perceptions of the importance they feel about an ethical
issue. Because perceived importance is fundamentally
driven by the perceptions of the individual decision
maker, they suggest that perceived importance will have
an even stronger impact on the process of ethical
decision-making. Using this measure, Robin et al.
measured the ethical decision-making processes of ad
managers, focusing on the link between making a moral
judgment and establishing moral intent. Their results
suggested that perceived importance is an antecedent to
making a moral judgment. We therefore hypothesized:
Hypothesis 2. Perceived importance of an ethical issue
will be (a) a positive indicator of moral judgment of the
behavior and (b) not an indicator of moral intent.
Hypothesis 3. The link between moral judgment and
moral intent will be weaker for scenarios with low
perceived importance than for scenarios with high
perceived importance.
Robin et al. also proposed that moral judgments
inuence on moral intent was weakened in scenarios of
low importance, because of the greater importance of
other factors. We therefore suggested that one of those
factors is moral obligation, which is an extension of the
theory of planned behaviors personal normative
beliefs, emphasizing a combination of personal and
social pressures [3]; it was more important than
personal normative beliefs in predicting behavioral
intention in one ethical context, and empirical studies in
an IT context have found a signicant relationship
between moral obligation and moral intent. Thus:
Hypothesis 4. Moral obligation will be a positive
indicator of moral intent.
If moral obligation is one of the other determinants
of behavior that inuence moral intent, its relationship
should be heightened for scenarios with low perceived
importance, giving:
Hypothesis 5. The link between moral obligation and
moral intent will be higher for scenarios with low
perceived importance than for scenarios with high
perceived importance.
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 314
Fig. 1. Four-component model of ethical decision-making.
Street et al. [27] proposed that individuals may not
think about ethical situations in some situations, using
the process of the four-component model because they
choose not to expend the cognitive energy and make the
decision on emotional grounds. Differing amounts of
effort would be especially observed in a multiple
scenario situation. We sought to overcome potential
cognitive expenditure bias by having the subjects
answer questions after a short on-line discussion of each
scenario rather than in a single large questionnaire.
Fig. 2 summarizes our research model. Previous
studies used surveys alone to gather perceptions about
ethical scenarios, with no interaction between the
subjects. Gathering perceptions after subjects had
interacted was a signicant difference of our study
from others.
3. Research method
The subjects for our experiment were recruited from
students in a junior-level MIS course at a private mid-
western U.S. university. Participation in the study was
stated to be voluntary in the informed consent form; but
since it was conducted during normal class time and in
the presence of the instructor, it is possible that students
felt a pressure to participate. They were given a small
parting gift: a pen or pencil worth approximately one
dollar (U.S.). Although their moral reasoning may be
different than professionals based on their age and moral
development, junior-level students were expected to
exhibit differences in ethical decision-making on the
scenarios we chose. Even given their level of involve-
ment, this was sufcient to test our hypotheses [9].
3.1. Data collection system and materials
The data collection application was entirely web-
based. First, subjects lled out a demographic and
personality questionnaire. Once all had completed this,
they were randomly divided into groups of ve or six
members and the separate groups discussed each
scenario for 3 min (students in the nal sessions
indicated that this was enough time) in an anonymous
chat room. After discussing the scenario, subjects
completed the questionnaire for that scenario. Sessions
lasted approximately 60 min.
Needing scenarios that varied on the perceived
importance scale but wanting to build from previous
research, we chose the ve scenarios used by Ref. [14].
Their full text is shown in Appendix A. The scenarios are
different with respect to the issues involved, but similar in
that the behavior was questionable (indeed, the behavior
in scenarios one, four, and ve is illegal under U.S. law;
though none of our students seemed to recognize this).
3.2. Variables
Our study variables were the extended four-
component model items: (1) perceived importance of
the ethical issue (lower = more important), (2) moral
judgment of the behavior (higher = less acceptable), and
(3) moral obligation to act (higher = stronger obligation
to act). The dependent variable was moral intent, with
higher values representing a lower probability that the
subjects would engage in the behavior. Although
multiple item instruments would have been desirable,
single item instruments for judgment, obligation, and
intent were employed in our study to minimize
questionnaire fatigue (23% of the respondents did not
complete a single-topic questionnaire in Peace et al.s
study, thus a shorter questionnaire was assumed to result
in higher quality responses). The same items have been
used in previous research (e.g., [13]), and results
suggested that the single-item instruments captured a
reasonable amount of the variation in the underlying
constructs. The complete text of the questionnaires for
each scenario is in Appendix B, with a summary of the
psychometric properties of the perceived importance
scale. Control variables included background and
personality variables that have been shown to affect
or proposed as affecting ethical decision-making: age,
gender, locus of control [25], and ego strength [28].
3.3. Sample
Of the 167 participants in our study, 81 were male.
Students from a variety of business majors participated,
with the largest proportion indicating management
(16%) or marketing (16%).
4. Results
Paired t-tests and SEM, specically partial least
squares (PLS), were used to test the research model for
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 315
Fig. 2. Research model.
each scenario. PLS was chosen because of its low
sample size requirements relative to covariance-based
SEM like LISREL or EQS [6]. PLS recommends a
minimum sample size of ten times the largest number of
structural paths directed at a particular construct in the
model, which for us was seven (ego strength, locus of
control, gender, age, perceived importance, moral
judgment, and moral obligation). Therefore, the mini-
mum sample size required was 70. Thus our PLS
analysis had sufcient power.
4.1. Ethical models by scenario
A summary of the results of the PLS analysis for
scenarios one through ve is shown in Figs. 37. To
reduce the chance of a type 1 error when multiple
comparisons were made, a Bonferroni adjustment was
made to the signicance level, leaving an alpha level of
0.01 necessary to infer that a difference or coefcient
was greater than zero. To make the diagrams readable,
the paths from the control variables to the study
variables were not shown. Signicance of path
coefcients was tested using the bootstrap resampling
technique (500 subsamples). The number shown below
the construct name was the percentage of variance in a
construct that was explained by variance in its
antecedent constructs (R
2
).
Table 1 summarizes the mean scores for each of the
items in the model (importance is the average of the four
items). We focused on differences with respect to
perceived importance, but felt that reporting and testing
the means of the other items would aid the reader. Mean
perceptions that are not different from one another are
underlined ( p 0.01). Higher scores generally indicated
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 316
Fig. 3. Summary of PLS results for scenario 1.
*
Path coefcient is
different than zero ( p 0.01).
Fig. 4. Summary of PLS results for scenario 2.
*
Path coefcient is
different than zero ( p 0.01).
Fig. 5. Summary of PLS results for scenario 3.
*
Path coefcient is
different than zero ( p 0.01).
Fig. 6. Summary of PLS results for scenario 4.
*
Path coefcient is
different than zero ( p 0.01).
Fig. 7. Summary of PLS results for scenario 5.
*
Path coefcient is
different than zero ( p 0.01).
Table 1
Comparison of mean perceptions by scenario
a
a
Means sharing the same line are not signicantly different from
one another.
a more negative response to the questionable behavior,
except for perceived importance, which is reverse-coded
with lower scores indicating a higher perceived
importance. With respect to perceived importance, the
scenarios were ordered ve, one, four, two and three
(scenarios one, four, two, and three were signicantly
different fromone another). The path coefcients linking
moral judgment and moral obligation with moral intent
were compared for purposes of testing hypotheses three
and ve.
The path coefcients were compared using a multi-
group analysis technique [7]. The approach involved
computing the pooled estimator for the variance of the
two coefcients and calculating a t-statistic using the
difference in the two paths. Table 2 summarizes the path
coefcients and differences among the model variables
for all the scenarios. The scenario with the lowest
strength path coefcient is shown to the left and the
scenario with the highest strength path is shown to the
right. Paths that were not statistically different from
one another ( p 0.01) shared the same line beneath the
scores.
Hypothesis 1: Moral judgment was a signicant,
positive indicator of moral intent for all scenarios
(Figs. 37). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported.
Hypothesis 2: The perceived importance of an ethical
issue was a signicant, positive indicator of moral
judgment for all scenarios (Figs. 37). Perceived
importance had a weak but signicant inuence on
moral intent for scenarios two, three, and four. Thus,
Hypothesis 2 was partially supported.
Hypothesis 3: The link between moral judgment and
moral intent was not weaker for scenarios with low
perceived importance. Scenario 3, with the lowest
perceived importance (Table 1), fell in the middle of the
others in its link from moral judgment to moral intent
and was not signicantly different from scenarios 1 and
5 (Table 2), which, with the highest perceived
importance scores, had the strongest links from moral
judgment to moral intent but were only signicantly
higher than scenario 4, whose perceived importance
score fell in the middle of the others. Thus, Hypothesis 3
was not supported.
Hypothesis 4: Moral obligation toward a behavior is
a signicant, positive indicator of moral intent for
scenarios 2 and 4 (Figs. 37). Thus, Hypothesis 4 was
partially supported.
Hypothesis 5: Scenarios with lower perceived
importance did not necessarily have higher links from
moral obligation to moral intent. Scenarios 4 and 2,
while falling in the middle of the others with respect to
perceived importance (Table 1), had the strongest links
from moral obligation to intent (Table 2). Scenario 3,
which had the lowest perceived importance score, had
the weakest link from obligation to intent. Thus,
Hypothesis 5 was not supported.
5. Discussion
We compared the decision-making process of
individuals across multiple ethical situations involving
the use of IT. The results suggested that the decision-
making process varied across situations. In all of the
models, moral judgment had a signicant, positive
relationship with moral intent, and perceived impor-
tance had a signicant, positive link with moral
judgment (perceived importance is reverse-coded),
which suggested that these links held for all ethical
decision-making in an IT context, regardless of how IT
was used/misused.
Moral obligation, on the other hand, was incon-
sistently linked: having a signicant, positive link to
moral intent in only two out of ve scenarios. We hoped
that perceived importance, as a measure of the moral
intensity of the scenario, might be able to explain much
of the difference in ethical decision-making across
scenarios. However, the relationship between perceived
importance and the link from moral judgment to intent
and the link from moral obligation to intent was not a
linear relationship as Robin et al. had suggested. Given
these results, it seems reasonable to propose at least that
a semblance of a U-shaped relationship existed:
scenarios with very high or very low perceived
importance had a stronger links from moral judgment
to moral intent than scenarios with mid-level perceived
importance.
Since different beliefs (other than perceived impor-
tance) could be responsible for differences in ethical
decision-making across scenarios involving IT use, we
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 317
Table 2
Comparison of path coefcients
a
a
Coefcients sharing the same line were not signicantly different
from one another.
considered other factors. Masons [17] four ethical
issues (privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility)
might explain some differences on a categorical basis.
Specically, scenarios 2 and 4 both involved intellectual
property, which is easy to reproduce and share. For
these two scenarios, moral obligation had a higher
inuence on moral intent than the others. Scenario 5 had
a signicantly stronger link from moral judgment to
moral intent than scenario 4, suggesting that privacy
issues were considered different from intellectual
property ones. Unfortunately, the limited number of
each type of scenario in our study made denitive
statements impossible.
Moral responsibility may account for some of the
difference among the models [11]. A key component is
severity of consequences. The subjects in our study had
to assume that the actor in the scenario was not punished
in any way, so the only consequences were social or
personal. Because students may perceive of electronic
distribution of software as having no social conse-
quence, the behavior in scenarios 2 and 4 would
probably have a weaker link between moral judgment
and moral intent, leading to a relatively strong path from
moral obligation to moral intent. This does not
completely account for the difference because the
behavior in scenario 3 would also have little social
consequence. Maybe its unimportance was such a large
driver of moral intent that the moral responsibility
component was overridden. Scenarios 1, 3, and 5, with
either high or low perceived importance exhibited
insignicant links from moral obligation to moral
intent.
5.1. Limitations
Our study used third-person scenarios and college
students as subjects. According to Greenberg and
Eskew, this is appropriate for studying basic psycho-
logical processes. However, college students judg-
ments of the behavior of others should not be
generalized to organizational settings, regardless of
their being the professionals of tomorrow. Given
their lack of involvement and relative immaturity, it is
not surprising that college students have been shown to
perceive questionable behavior as being more ethical
than IS professionals.
6. Conclusions
Our experimental results showed that the relation-
ship among factors that inuence ethical decision-
making is complex and that different factors were
important in determining moral intent for different
ethical scenarios. We found perceived importance to be
an important, but not all-inclusive inuence on ethical
decision-making. It has a signicant, positive link with
moral judgment. However, its effect on the link between
individuals moral judgment and their intention to
engage in that behavior was not tied to perceived
importance. Our U-shape may be an artifact of the
scenarios in an IT setting.
An issue with very low or high importance seems to
lead people to economize on their cognitive efforts and
rely on an emotional response (based on moral
judgment at the expense of moral responsibility). Then,
scenarios 1, 3, and 5 may not be considered ethical
dilemmas; rather but ethical certainties.
Our study had differences among the scenarios in the
ethical decision-making process. Certainly, attitudes
toward software piracy can vary enough across indivi-
duals to allow for the validation of the decision-making.
However, attitudes and decision-making processes can
vary within individuals when faced with different ethical
situations, making studies that compare beliefs and
attitudes for a variety of questionable behaviors a better
validation of theories of ethical decision-making.
6.1. Implications for managers
Researchers in IT ethics all suggest implementing
codes of ethics and ethical training programs as a way of
limiting unethical behavior. When such training can be
targeted, other studies have suggested focusing on
groups with personality styles or demographics that
seem to be less ethical. However, training efforts might
need to be focused on the decision-making process
rather than ethical outcomes.
It is difcult to say whether more mature ITusers will
feel the same way about the scenarios as the students in
our sample, but managers should target training based on
the relative importance to users of the behaviors that they
wish to limit. Issues of high importance will lead users to
weigh their moral judgment on the issue, so managers
may not wish to spend an inordinate time discussing
them. For issues that fall into the gray area, users are
more likely to weigh the moral issues, and managers can
emphasize a moral obligation when employees are faced
with the situation. Of particular concern are those
behaviors of low importance to users. Because applica-
tions of ITare often novel, issues such as using company
computers for personal work or looking at condential
information may seem so unimportant that they fall
outside of the gray area, resulting indecisions made on
non-moral grounds.
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 318
Appendix A. Ethical scenarios
A.1. Scenario 1
A programmer at a bank realized that he had
accidentally overdrawn his checking account. He made
a small adjustment in the banks accounting system so
that his account would not have an additional service
charge assessed. As soon as he made a deposit that made
his balance positive again, he corrected the banks
accounting system.
A.2. Scenario 2
With approval from his boss, a person ordered
an accounting program from a mail-order software
company. When the employee received his order, he
found that the store had accidentally sent him a very
expensive word processing program as well as the
accounting package that he had ordered. He looked at
the invoice, and it indicated only that the accounting
package had been sent. The employee decided to keep
the word processing package.
A.3. Scenario 3
A computer programmer enjoyed building small
computer applications to give his friends. He would
frequently go to his ofce on Saturday when no one was
working and use his employers computer to develop
computer applications. He did not hide the fact that he
was going into the building; he had to sign a register at a
security desk each time he entered.
A.4. Scenario 4
A computing service provider offered the use of a
program at a premium charge to subscribing
businesses. The program was to be used only through
the service companys computer. An employee at one
of the subscribing businesses obtained a copy of the
program accidentally, when the service company
inadvertently revealed it to him in discussions
through the system (terminal to terminal) concerning
a possible program bug. All copies of the program
outside of the computer system were marked as
trade secret, proprietary to the service, but the copy
the customer obtained from the computer was not.
The employee used the copy of the program after he
obtained it, without paying the usage fee to the
service.
A.5. Scenario 5
A marketing companys employee was doing piece
work production data runs on company computers after
hours under contract for a state government. Her
moonlighting activity was performed with the knowl-
edge and approval of her manager. The data were
questionnaire answers of 14,000 public school children.
The questionnaire contained highly specic questions
on domestic life of the children and their parents. The
governments purpose was to develop statistics for
behavioral proles, for use in public assistance
programs. The data included the respondents names,
addresses, and so forth.
The employees contract contained no divulgement
restrictions, except a provision that statistical compila-
tions and analyzes were the property of the government.
The manager discovered the exact nature of the
information in the tapes and its value in business
services his company supplied. He requested that the
data be copied for subsequent use in the business. The
employee decided the request did not violate the terms
of the contract, and she complied.
Appendix B. Questionnaires
Typically, researchers reporting PLS results will
show tables verifying the psychometric properties of
their instruments. These would include comparing
average variance extracted (AVE) for each construct
with its correlation with other latent variables, and
reporting loadings and cross loadings. We chose
not to include tables summarizing this analysis
partly to reduce the amount of space this would
take in a study involving ve models, but primarily
because only one of our constructs (perceived
importance) consisted of multiple items. Its psycho-
metric properties exceeded recommended levels:
composite reliability for perceived importance ranged
from 0.971 to 0.989 and its AVE ranged from 0.893 to
0.958.
B.1. Questionnaire
Judgment The [person in the scenarios] [behavior] was:
(acceptableunacceptable) (derived from
Leonard et al.)
Intent If you were the [person], what is the probability
you would have [engaged in the behavior]?
(highly probablehighly improbable) (derived
from Leonard et al.)
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 319
Importance The [persons] [behavior] was a(n): (extremely
important issueunimportant issue, highly
signicant issueinsignicant issue, issue is of
considerable concernissue is of no concern,
fundamental issuetrivial issue) (derived from
Robin et al.)
Obligation How morally obligated would you feel to take
corrective action in this case? (no obligation
strong obligation) (derived from Leonard et al.)
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Russell Haines is an Assistant Professor of
Information Technology at Old Dominion
University. He received his B.S. and Master
of Accountancy at Brigham Young Univer-
sity and his Ph.D. at the University of
Houston. His central research interest is
the impact of information technology on
group interaction. He has published studies
on the negotiation process in software
development teams, group development
in virtual teams, ethical decision-making, computer-mediated com-
munication, and supply chain decision-making.
Lori N.K. Leonard is an Associate Pro-
fessor of Management Information Sys-
tems at the University of Tulsa. Dr.
Leonard received her Ph.D. from the Uni-
versity of Arkansas and is a member of the
Association for Information Systems and
the Decision Sciences Institute. Her
research interests include electronic com-
merce, ethics in computing, C2C com-
merce, and online trust. Her publications
have appeared in Journal of the Association for Information Systems,
Journal of Computer Information Systems, Journal of End User
Computing, Information & Management, Journal of Organizational
Computing and Electronic Commerce, as well as in other journals, and
Proceedings of various Conferences.
R. Haines, L.N.K. Leonard / Information & Management 44 (2007) 313320 320