A Study on Ethical Behavior for Organizational Information Security Management: Focusing on the Roles of Ethical Leadership, Trust in Organizations, and Psychological Ownership

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In today’s digital era, growing concerns over information security incidents have made strengthening employees’ ethical behavior a critical task for companies. Accordingly, this study sought to explore ways to promote employees’ ethical behavior. To this end, this study developed a research model that examines the psychological mechanisms by which supervisors’ ethical leadership, employees’ trust in the organization, and employees' psychological ownership influence their employees’ ethical behavior. Data were collected through a survey, and the proposed model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) based on 433 valid responses. The results show that supervisors’ ethical leadership significantly influences employees’ trust in the organization and their psychological ownership, which in turn significantly affects their ethical behavior. Additionally, employees’ trust in the organization was found to mediate the relationship between supervisors’ ethical leadership and psychological ownership. This study is significant in that it provides a new perspective on the potential use of cognitive mechanisms related to employees' ethical behavior to improve information security performance. The findings and implications discussed in this study are expected to provide useful insights for developing effective strategies to enhance organizational information security performance.