Americas Conference on Information Systems AMCIS 2011 Detroit

Organizations and monitoring agencies continue to express concern over software piracy because of the ethical, legal and financial implications of noncompliance. This study focuses on how software license noncompliance is actually a factor in software piracy. Many organizations use a variety of software tools distributed over their workforce and tracking license compliance for turnover, upgrades, and functional reassignments is problematic. The result of this study indicates that if organizations promote an environment in which software compliance and ethical beliefs are maintained, then penalties and legal consequences are less a driver of compliance intentions. Additionally, age has a moderating effect on intent to comply indicating that as employee age increases, software piracy resulting from license noncompliance is less likely.