Top 50 Papers

Technological entitlement: It’s my technology and I’ll (Ab)Use it how I want to

| Tejaswini Herath, Management Information Systems Quarterly

Employees who engage in the malicious misuse of their organization’s technology (computer abuse) pose considerable financial and reputational threats to companies. This can include abusing access to user data and commercially sensitive data files.

When it comes to predicting which employees might engage in computer abuse at work, technological entitlement was identified as a potentially valuable employee characteristic to study. This research examines the construct of technological entitlement as the persistent sense of a person being more deserving of technological resources, uses and privileges compared to other employees.

The team found that technological entitlement predicts computer abuse behaviour (beyond general entitlement), and that the relationship is stronger when employees perceive organizational restrictions on technology use. Restrictive remote-access policies also amplify the technological entitlement-computer abuse relationship.

Across three studies of working adults, the researchers found that technologically entitled employees pose a direct risk to the information system security of organizations. The overall findings provide insights into the psychological make-up of employees who can be considered malicious insiders supporting the argument that technological entitlement is a defining feature of people who commit deviant acts in a workplace setting.

Organizations that work toward establishing technology policies that are procedurally and informationally fair will better mitigate security risks associated with technological entitlement.