Understanding differences in ethical beliefs and behaviors toward software copying: the effects of organization culture

Unauthorized software copying is believed to be widespread in many organizations today. The annual losses to the software vendors from software piracy are estimated in the billions of dollars. From the perspective of managers in organizations, unauthorized software copying means the threat of costly litigation on the one hand, balanced against the reduced expense for additional software if unauthorized copies are used. The individual computer user, however, ultimately makes the decision whether or not to attempt to copy protected software. It may be possible to exercise more informed control over software copying if there were a more complete understanding of the factors that lead to the decision to copy software. The goal of this study is to identify those organizational factors that are associated with a variety of attitudes and behaviors regarding unauthorized software copying. In particular, we focus on the impact of organizational culture in promoting or discouraging unauthorized software copying. We examine the culture and software copying behaviors in two very different organizations: a private university with a technical/engineering focus (TechU) and a public university with a business focus in information systems (BusU). We developed survey instruments that measure dimensions of organization culture and attitudes and behaviors toward software copying, and issued the surveys to students enrolled in the required introductory undergraduate information systems courses at the two universities. Our results reveal notable differences in the attitudes and behaviors towards software copying at the two universities. Students at TechU are significantly more likely to consider unauthorized copying of software to be acceptable and admit to making more unauthorized copies than students at BusU. There are a number of important differences in the organization culture at the two universities that underlie these variations in attitudes and behaviors. We discuss the implications of our results for academicians and managers who are trying to reduce illegal software copying. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part ofthis work for peIWnal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are no1 made or distributed for prolit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. ho copy otherwise. to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. SIGCPR ‘93 New Orleans LA USA Copyright ACM 1999 l-581 13-063-5/99/04...$5.00 Sandra A. Slaughter Carnegie Mellon University 314A GSIA Tech & Frew Streets Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (412)268-2308 Sandras+@andrew.cmu.edu