Pan-Pacific Conference XXXIV. Designing New Business Models in Developing Economies

Can Ethics Be Used as a Tool of Information Security Management?
Kyung Hoon Yang
Department of Information Systems, School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse,
yang.kyun@uwlax.edu
Young-Chan Lee
Management Science, Division of Economics & Commerce, Dongguk University, 707 Seokjang-dong, Gyeongju,
Gyeongbuk, Korea 780-714
chanlee@dongguk.ac.kr
Abstract
The objectives of this study are twofold. The first is to find
whether ethics related to information society are differently
recognized from other business ethical issues and whether
its influential factors are also different. The second is how
sense of security, sense of ethics in information society,
sense of knowledge-sharing, and online user participation
relate to each other.
The authors found that the perception of information ethics
is differently recognized from other ethics such as sexual
discrimination, racial discrimination, price discrimination,
bribery, harmful products, telecommunication, pollution
issues, and intellectual property protection issues.
For this research, the authors used the protection
motivation theory and built a model that shows the
relationship between several ethical issues and knowledge
sharing, security and participation in the virtual
community. This was verified by a survey with 497
samples. We expect these findings will be helpful for
future researchers and practitioners.
Key words: Ethics, Knowledge sharing, security,
Protection Motivation Theory
I. Introduction
In this paper, the authors insist that information ethics and
information security have a common goal. Ethics means
different things to different people according to the
situation, and there is a relationship among ethics, security,
knowledge sharing, knowledge acceptance and online user
participation. The Protection motivation theory (PMT),
developed by Ross, was used to provide a theoretical
background to demonstrate the relationship among
knowledge sharing, ethics and security. In this paper, the
authors will argue that: 1) ethics of different fields have
different factors and therefore a level of ethics of agency
(people or organizations) can be different depending on the
categories, 2) the sense of security and sense of ethics in
information society are related to each other, 3) security is
related to knowledge acceptance while ethics are related to
knowledge transfer. For this purpose, in section two,
literature related to ethics, security and knowledge sharing
was reviewed. In section three, the model and hypotheses
are set up. In section four, the surveys are analyzed and the
results discussed. In section five, a conclusion is made.
II.
Literature review: relationship between
security and ethics
When an individual is transferring their knowledge to
another person, they are vulnerable to having their
expertise and knowledge stolen. Therefore, many
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individuals protect themselves and their information in
different ways using different security measures. Some
individuals protect their knowledge by using copyrights
and patents to legally prevent others from laying claim to
their ideas. Others are more concerned with the stealing of
information en route to the recipient, so their information is
encrypted to prevent others from stealing it. Companies
emphasize security first when they are trying to transfer
knowledge within the company from one area to another.
Usually, policies are put in place so that employees do not
have access to all company information. Only employees
who need that information can access it, so that knowledge
is kept on a “need to know” basis.
The emphasized use of security over ethics during the
knowledge transfer process can lead to individuals making
decisions that are overly on the offensive.
III.
Research model and hypotheses
1. Protection Motivation Theory
The Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), developed by
Rogers in 1975 and later revised by Rogers and Maddux in
1983, describes different ways that individuals cope with
health threats. This theory can also be used to analyze why
agents including companies and individuals make certain
decisions about their security policies. The relationships
among trust, security, and ethics in knowledge sharing can
be explained based upon PMT.
In PMT, threat appraisal and coping appraisal are two key
factors. Threat appraisal concerns the process of evaluating
the components of a fear appeal that are relevant to an
individual’s perception of how threatened he or she feels.
The PMT variables that capture threat appraisal are
perceived vulnerability, perceived severity, and fear
arousal. Perceived vulnerability assesses how personally
susceptible an individual feels about the communicated
threat. Perceived severity assesses how serious the
individual believes that the threat would be to his or her
own life. Fear arousal assesses how much fear the threat
evokes for the individual. Fear is seen as an intervening
variable; the more vulnerable an individual feels about a
threat and the more serious he or she believes it to be, the
more fear will be aroused and the greater the appraised
threat will be. The greater the perceived threat, the more
likely the individual is to be motivated to protect himself or
herself; that is, the more likely a behavioral intention to
adopt a protective behavior will be formed.
Coping appraisal evaluates the components of a fear appeal
that are relevant to an individual’s assessment of the
recommended coping response to the appraised threat. The
PMT includes self-efficacy and response costs in the