Ethics, Information Technology and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Although Information Technology (IT) plays a critical role in organizations and is essential for nowadays business survival, but organizations have several ethical challenges in embarking this technology. Nonetheless, because of its role and importance in organizations, it is necessary to identify factors affecting on IT ethics. The relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and IT ethics remained relatively underdeveloped and a review of these studies indicates that validity and reliability issues have yet to be fully addressed. This study with an OCB approach examined what factors affect IT ethics. Data were collected from 119 personnel and managers of IT firms located in Tehran. The a priori proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling techniques. The proposed model was determined to fit the data reasonably well. These results indicate that IT ethics can be explained by corporate ethical values. In this relationship, organizational commitment and OCB dimensions are as mediators. The theoretical and practical implicationsof the model are discussed.