Information Technology Professionals' Ethics: The Case of Jordan

This research aims at investigating the ethical attitudes of IT professionals in a developing country, Jordan towards four IT-related ethical issues including: privacy, piracy, accuracy and access. It examines whether characteristics of IT professionals (i.e. age, gender, experience, educational level, and type of organization) influence their ethical attitudes or not. Moreover, it examines whether organizational ethical culture (OEC) moderates the relationships between IT professionals' ethical attitudes and their characteristics and backgrounds. A questionnaire was designed to collect data from 380 IT professionals in public and private organizations in Jordan. Results showed that there was a high level of concern among IT professionals regarding the issues of privacy, piracy, accuracy and access. Significant differences were found between males and females regarding the issues of privacy and piracy. Results also indicated that ethical attitudes towards the issues of privacy, piracy and accuracy were affected by educational level. Moderating analyses revealed that ethical culture moderates the relationship between level of education and ethical attitudes of the respondents towards accuracy. Based on these results, some implications and recommendations were made.