Polarization of Perceptions of IT-enabled Privacy Violations at Workplace: Impact of Respondent Position, Peer Belief and Peer Pressure

Abstract

Whereas information Technology (IT) has given us freedom to do things in more easy and flexible ways on one hand, on the other, it also given us some ethical issues to look into. One such issue is that of privacy. People's perceptions on the issues of privacy and IT vary and it is important to assess how they vary. Perceived ethicality is not a normative fact, the perception varies from situation to situation and individual to individual. It is a function of how the individual constructs the social situation. There are many factors that influence how the individual constructs and perceives a situation. This paper empirically assesses the role of three such factors, respondent position (as a target or an actor), peer beliefs / perception of the situation, and the tendency of an individual to give in to peer pressure. Responses of 125, undergraduate and postgraduate students, on a structured questionnaire are analyzed. Results show a significant difference in the perception of respondents when they are target and when they are actors. Peer perception, is related to perceived ethicality and peer pressure moderates the relationship between peer perception and perceived ethicality though only for situation where the respondent is the actor.

Keywords : ethics, IT enabled, privacy, peer pressure

Introduction

Information Technology (IT) has given freedom to do things in easier, faster and flexible ways. The use of IT has given rise to many capabilities both immediate and derived. To begin with the data and information is now accessible to a much larger number of potential users than previously possible. It has made the capturing of until now intractable data possible at a much faster speed, with facilities for storage. Indeed these capabilities have helped tremendously in managing operations at a much larger scale in a much shorter time. As in any other managerial function, the study of Management Information systems raises question concerning "appropriate or responsible" managerial behavior. No doubt, IT has provided the capacity to do many things and make many decisions, but the ethical issue would be, does this capacity to do something justify the act itself? For example, if a manager can monitor employees behavior at all times of the working day, should he or she do so? The individual privacy in the workplace is becoming an important ethical issue in the present day context. The notion of privacy in recent times is undergoing change owing to the recent developments in the use of information technology. People's perceptions of what is ethical and what is not are under flux and get governed by many factors. Before we address the issues of privacy in this context, let us look at how the concept of privacy has been treated traditionally.

Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International convict on civil and political rights and in many other international and regional treaties. Privacy underpins human dignity and other key values such as freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights issues of the modern age. Of all the human rights in the international catalogue, privacy is perhaps the most difficult to define (Michael, 1994). Privacy has roots deep in history. The Bible has numerous references to privacy (Hixon, 1987). There was also a protection of privacy in early Hebrew culture, classical Greece and ancient China (STOA). These protections mostly focused on the right to solitude. Definitions of privacy vary widely according to the context and environment. In many countries the concept has been fused with data protection, which interpret privacy in term of management of personal information (Davies, 1996).

The law of privacy can be traced as far back as 1316, when the justice of the Peace Act in England provided for the arrest of peeping toms and eavesdroppers. In 1888, Cooley planted the seed of privacy for the legal profession's interest in the soil of the United States of America according to him the right to respect for private life is the right to be left lone. A couple of years later in (1890), Warren and Brandies (1890) cultivated the notion with the initial analysis of the concept of privacy. Interest in the right of privacy increased in the 1960s and 1970 with advent of IT. The surveillance potential of powerful computer systems prompted demands for specific rules governing the collection and handling of personal information.

Different authors have defined privacy in different ways. Alan Westin (1967) defined privacy, "as the desire of people to choose freely that under what circumstance and to what extent individuals will expose themselves". According to Henderson and Snyder (1999), privacy is a right of individual to control the collection and use of personal information about themselves.

As mentioned earlier, over the past decade IT has become an important tool for communication and research. The technology is growing at an exponential rate with millions of new users. IT is also used increasingly as a tool for commercial transactions. The capacity, capability, speed and reliability of IT are constantly improving, resulting in constant development of new uses for the medium. IT has changed the public's perception of privacy. Organizations are faced with completely new policy decisions in term of which actions can be deemed damaging to individual's privacy and which are merely inconvenient (Agranoff, 1991). Information gathered via computer monitoring is likely to be increasingly used to coach employees. Currently many organizations use the information so gathered as a basis for criticism (De Tienne, 1993). The increasing sophistication of information technology with its capacity to collect, analyze and disseminate information has introduced a sense of urgency to the demand for legislation (Davies, 1996). Two forces threaten our privacy. One is the growth of information technology, with its enhanced capacity for surveillance, communication, computation, storage and retrieval. A second and more insidious threat is the increased value of information in decision-making. Information is increasingly valuable to policy makers; they convert it even if acquiring it invades another's privacy (Mason, 1986). For some privacy is a psychological state, a condition of being apart from others closely related to alienation (Weinstein, 1971).

As mentioned earlier concept of privacy has been flexible, largely determined and decided by the individual. However, the current presence of information technology has made it even more unclear and ambiguous. In the wake of newer situations and newer issues relating to privacy, there is a need to assess how individuals perceive these newer situations. The perceived ethicality or otherwise of different issues related to privacy will involve a study of individual decision-making process and the factors that affect this process. Ethical issues by definition, involve a social construction by the individual, this process becomes more complex and important where is situational norms are also in a flux. Thus, the perceived ethicality of issues related to privacy depends upon the factors that affect this individual decision-making process. One important factor being considered in this work is the respondent position as an actor or target of violation of privacy. Using the ego defense bias, the rationalization processes are at work when the individual is the actor of situation involving violation of privacy, using the mechanism of neutralization (McDonald and Pak, 1996) and denial of an unethical act. It is also possible that the individual uses rationalization process to justify his or her act. Given the human tendency to diminish the negative acts of the self, it is likely that the individual will not perceive a violation of privacy as unethical. On the other hand, if the individual is the target of an unethical act of violation of privacy, it is likely that perceived unethicality is exaggerated.

Thus, our first objective is to study the perceived ethicality of a situation as a function of respondent position. On first hypothesis, hence is given below

H1: Situations where individuals are targets are likely to be perceived as more unethical as compared to the situation where individual are actors

There are many other factors that affect the perception of individual while making any ethical/unethical decision regarding privacy issues, peer belief is one such variable we are studying, the impact of this variable on perceived ethicality.

Peer Beliefs/Perception

Sutherland and Cressey's (1970) theory of differential association assumes that ethical/unethical behavior is learned in the process of interacting with persons who are part of intimate personal groups or role set. Research by Ferrell and Gresham (1985) research, show that differential associations with peers are better predictors of ethical/unethical behavior as compared to one's own ethical belief system. The findings support a model, which assumes that individual could become engaged in unethical behavior with a supporting belief system. This research further determines that the referent other group predicting ethical/unethical behavior of these employees is peers rather than top management.

Ferrell and Ferrell (1982), in another study on advertisement agency executives found that peers, the referents group closest to the focal person, is the strongest predictor of their ethical/unethical behavior. Watson and Pitt (1993) in their study investigated the personal computer user's attitudes towards ethical issues in personal computing. The findings of this study indicate that behavior of personal computer users when faced with an ethical/unethical issues is determined by their impression of how their peers behave in that situation. Thus, our second objective is to study the impact of peer beliefs about ethicality of privacy on the perceived ethicality.

However, we further believe that this relationship might vary for situations where the respondent is either the actor or the target. Our second hypothesis is as follows:

H2: Peer beliefs about ethicality of privacy will influence the perceived ethicality for situations where the respondent is the actor and not when the respondent is the target.

Though peer belief is an important predictor, it is likely that individuals vary on the extent to which they get influenced by peer perception. One factor that affects this relationship is the tendency of an individual to give in to peer pressure. Hence peer perception is the next issue that we explore.

Peer Pressure

Peer pressure occurs when the individual experiences implicit or explicit persuasions to adopt similar values, beliefs and goals or to participate in the same activities as those in the peer group. Ideally, the individual should make a decision based on a combination of value internalized from the family (as socialization process), values derived from thinking independently and values derived from friends and peers. Individuals vary in the extent to which they use these factors in decision-making. Thus, peer pressure is high for those who get influenced by the values of the relevant peer group. Though, peer perception is an important determinant but individuals vary in terms of the extent to which they get influenced by the peers. Peer pressure is the perceived pressure on the person from the peers. Thus peer pressure is likely to affect the above mentioned relationship between peer perception and perceived ethicality. Thus, our third hypothesis is as follows:

H3: Peer pressure will moderate the relationship between peer belief and perceived ethicality such that the perceived ethicality would be more like that of the peers for those respondents who show high peer pressure.

Methodology

Respondents

The present study collected data using questionnaire from 125 respondents. There were 56 undergraduates' students and 69 MBA student of UT Delhi, India. The average age of undergraduate respondents was around 20 years, and the average age of MBA students was around 30 years. Of these 91 were male and 34 were female respondents.

Procedure and Questionnaire

Data was collected through a structured questionnaire, which was divided into two sections. The details of the questionnaire are given below:

Section 1

This section contains two situations regarding privacy. First situation is where an individual is a target and the second situation is where the individual is the actor. Both the situations are followed by a question of perceived ethicality and peers perception of ethicality. (Please see Appendix for the situations)

Section 2

This section of the questionnaire assessed the peer pressure, i.e., the extent to which an individual gets influence by peer's beliefs. The four-item scale is taken from Taylor and Peter (1995) and modified for the present study to assess peer pressure only.

Results

Our first objective was to assess whether there is a significant difference in the perceived ethicality of situations where the respondent is either the target or the actor. To test this t- test was conducted between the perceived ethicality means for the two situations. Results are reported in Table 1.

It can be seen from Table 1 that the perceived ethicality of the first situation where the individual is the actor is significantly higher than that of the second situation where the individual is the target. Thus our first hypothesis finds full support.

To assess the relationship of peer belief, and peer pressure with perceived ethicality, correlations were computed. The results (see Table 2) showed that for both the situations, the correlations were highly significant, there by indicating that peer belief strongly affects perceived ethicality of the individuals both as targets as well as actors. Thus our second hypothesis receives only partial support as, we expected the relationship to be significant only for the first situation where the individual is the actor.

To assess the moderating role of peer pressure, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted for perceived ethicality as dependent valuable (DV), and Peer Belief, Peer Pressure and the interaction between the two (in that order) as independent variables. For each interaction term the variables were first converted into Z- scores to give the scores equivalence. The interaction term was taken as the product of the Z - scores. The regression method used requires the researcher to specify the order of independent variables. In this research, the independent effects of the two variables are included first and the interaction term was included last. Thus, by taking the interaction at the third step the compounding effects of the first two were removed. For the interaction hypothesis to be significant, the beta weights of the product term had to be significant.

Table 3 shows the results of perceived ethicality in privacy situation one, where individual is the actor. The results show that both peers belief and peer pressure has a major influence on individual perceived ethicality regarding privacy issue. Results also show that peer pressure interacts with peer belief to predict perceived ethicality. Before we test the direction of this moderator let us look at results for the second situation (target).

Table 4 shows the results of perceived ethicality in privacy situation two, where individual is a target in the situation. The result shows that the interaction of peer belief and peers pressure has no impact on perceived ethicality of individual decision regarding privacy.

The interaction effect is significant for situation one, i.e., where the respondent is the actor. To see the direction of the results means are identified. Significant interaction is further analyzed graphically scores with ± one standard deviation from the means were plotted (Hunt and Osbrun, 1975). It needs to be mentioned here that the graphical representation shows the direction of the interaction effect, which is not shown by the beta weights. For the graphical purpose data are grouped into qualitative categories (low and High) Table 5 lists the mean scores on perceived ethicality for different combinations low and high of peer pressure and peer beliefs. The same data is shown graphically in Figure 1. The results clearly indicate that for high peer pressure perceived ethicality is lowest when peer belief is low and it is highest when peer belief is high. Thus our third hypothesis too finds full support.

Discussion

In the present study we have taken ethical issues of privacy and tried to assess the impact of peers belief and peers perception on unethical/ethical decision-making regarding these issues, at the same time we are also trying to assess the difference in the opinions of individual in a situation where they are acting as an actor and in a situation where they are a target themselves. At the first level, there is a significant difference in the perceived ethicality of the situation where the respondent is either an actor or the target. For the identical situation if one is the actor the situation is perceived as more ethical as compared to a situation where the actor is a target. Ego defensiveness biases are operating while making decisions of ethicality. Hence it is important to build this reason and logic into any assessment of individual's perceptions.

Our first result shows that a situation is perceived to be unethical if self is the target as compared to the situation when the self is the actor. It seems that at least in these situations self-interest is the guiding principle in deciding the ethicality of an issue and not a set of independent standards or values. This could be explained on the basis of changing situation and no clear social norms of right or wrong in the context of IT. The material worlds (IT) changes fast and the non-material world (values and beliefs) take a while to fall in place. In this time of flux, self-interest might govern ethical decision-making. At the individual level it looks like the psychological defense mechanism of neutralization is at work. Individuals, to lessen the impact of norm-violating behaviors upon their self-concept often use the neutralization framework as a technique. This is a rationalization process. The most common perceptual components of neutralization are (1) Denial of responsibility: where individuals might argue that they are not personally accountable for their actions because of circumstances beyond their control. (2) Denial of Injury: where the individuals contend that their action is not important and is an acceptable violation of normative behavior as probably no one suffers. (3) Denial of victim: where individuals condone their action by arguing that the violated party deserved whatever happened, i.e, a form of retributive justices is provoked. (4) Condensing the condemner: where individual points out that that they are not alone in the unethical action and that other are involved in similar disapproved behavior. Thus it seem in the case of a situation where ones own self acts as a violator of ethical norms the impact is significantly diminished. On the other hand, when one is the target the tendency is to enhance the negative impact. Thus, when the organizations design systems for control privacy issues this tendency to either inflate or deflate the impact needs to be accounted for.

The results of present study clearly show that individual decision-making gets influenced by what their peers think is right or wrong. Social belief of the referent group plays an important role in the perceptions of ethicality. Thus, it means that the collective norm or value operating in an organization will be a strong predictor of the pervasiveness of an unethical act. From the point of view of the organization, hence developing cultural belief through formal and informal mechanism are likely to yield positive results for controlling breach of privacy.

However, when the focus of attention is the individual, one important factor that predicts the perception is the tendency of an individual to get influenced by peer beliefs. However, it needs to be mentioned here that peer beliefs and peer perception are important predictors in our study because the sample of our study is the students who are more likely to get influenced by their peer groups. It is likely that the results (specially for hypothesis 2 and 3) are not all that strong for another sample of mature professionals.

Our study thus indicates that the individuals use ethical perception flexibly even for the same situation, as a function of their position. Thus the cognitive rationalization moves on a continuum of high ethicality to low ethicality depending upon their position. Also this perception is used flexibly as a function of peer belief and peer pressure. Thus, the design of system must respond to the issues flexibly (Bhal, 2000), keeping in mind the individual variations. The design of HR system, for privacy must keep in mind the position of the employees, as the perceptions of higher level employees (likely to be actors) will be different from that of the lower level employees (likely to be targets). The system must respond to the dynamic flexibility of level wise perceptions. The perception could be seen as moving on a continuum of ethical to unethical but it needs to integrated based on the situation and the actor involved, (Sushil, 2000 a, b). The flexibility has to be made operational at the level of diagnosis and analysis of the systems, keeping in mind the varying perceptions. At the next level the design of systems have to be flexible depending upon the situation and the position of the people.

Thus, the perceived ethicality of the same individual varies and there is a flexibility in the perception of ethicality specially by virtue of the position the respondent is in. A fact that must be addressed in the diagnosis and design of appropriate systems.

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Nivedita Debnath

Research Scholar

Kanika T. Bhal

Associate Professor

Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

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