Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Attitudes towards information ethics: a view from Egypt

Attitudes towards information ethics: a view from Egypt Purpose – The information technology (IT) related ethical issues will only increase in frequency and complexity with the increasing diffusion of IT in economies and societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore Egyptian students' attitudes towards the information ethics issues of privacy, access, property, and accuracy, and it evaluates the possible impact of a number of personal characteristics on such attitudes. Design/methodology/approach – This research utilized a cross‐sectional sample and data set to test five hypotheses. It adopted an instrument to collect the respondents' background information and assess their attitudes towards the information ethics issues of privacy, property, accuracy, and access. Egyptian business students at Alexandria University were asked to participate in the survey. A total of 305 responses were collected and analyzed. Findings – The analysis revealed that students are sensitive to the ethicality of information privacy, information accuracy, and information access. However, students are insensitive to the ethicality of property (software) right. In addition, years of education have a main effect on students' attitudes towards property, and gender and age have an interaction effect on students' attitudes towards access. Research limitations/implications – The findings of this research are based on a cross‐sectional data set collected from a sample of business students at a public university. Students, however, may make poor surrogates for business or IT professionals. Future similar research designs that employ large samples from Egyptian working professionals and students in other private and public universities are needed to verify the findings of this research. Practical implications – The findings suggest that the investigated university as well as the other similar Egyptian universities should consider integrating ethics education into their curricula. Teaching information ethics, especially from an Islamic perspective, is expected to positively influence students' information ethical attitudes. The enforcement of the existing property right protection laws should also curb software piracy in the Egyptian market. Originality/value – It is vital to expand the ethical research currently being performed in IT in order to help bridge the gap between behavior and IT. The findings of this research extend the understanding of students' attitudes towards the information ethics issues in Egyptian culture and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on global information ethics. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Information Communication and Ethics in Society Emerald Publishing

Attitudes towards information ethics: a view from Egypt

Download PDF
22 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/attitudes-towards-information-ethics-a-view-from-egypt-s1NY0zzI9T

References (111)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
1477-996X
DOI
10.1108/14779961211285872
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose – The information technology (IT) related ethical issues will only increase in frequency and complexity with the increasing diffusion of IT in economies and societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore Egyptian students' attitudes towards the information ethics issues of privacy, access, property, and accuracy, and it evaluates the possible impact of a number of personal characteristics on such attitudes. Design/methodology/approach – This research utilized a cross‐sectional sample and data set to test five hypotheses. It adopted an instrument to collect the respondents' background information and assess their attitudes towards the information ethics issues of privacy, property, accuracy, and access. Egyptian business students at Alexandria University were asked to participate in the survey. A total of 305 responses were collected and analyzed. Findings – The analysis revealed that students are sensitive to the ethicality of information privacy, information accuracy, and information access. However, students are insensitive to the ethicality of property (software) right. In addition, years of education have a main effect on students' attitudes towards property, and gender and age have an interaction effect on students' attitudes towards access. Research limitations/implications – The findings of this research are based on a cross‐sectional data set collected from a sample of business students at a public university. Students, however, may make poor surrogates for business or IT professionals. Future similar research designs that employ large samples from Egyptian working professionals and students in other private and public universities are needed to verify the findings of this research. Practical implications – The findings suggest that the investigated university as well as the other similar Egyptian universities should consider integrating ethics education into their curricula. Teaching information ethics, especially from an Islamic perspective, is expected to positively influence students' information ethical attitudes. The enforcement of the existing property right protection laws should also curb software piracy in the Egyptian market. Originality/value – It is vital to expand the ethical research currently being performed in IT in order to help bridge the gap between behavior and IT. The findings of this research extend the understanding of students' attitudes towards the information ethics issues in Egyptian culture and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on global information ethics.

Journal

Journal of Information Communication and Ethics in Society – Emerald Publishing

Published: Nov 23, 2012

Keywords: Information ethics; Information privacy; Information accuracy; Information access; Software copyright; Information technology; Ethics; Egypt

There are no references for this article.