The Impact of Organizational Commitment on Insiders’ Motivation to Protect Organizational Information Assets

2015/10/02 by Clay Posey, Tom Roberts, Tom L. Roberts +1 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies #Information and Cyber Security #Network Security and Intrusion Detection

paper · doi:10.1080/07421222.2015.1138374

openalex publication_date 2015/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Insiders may act to sustain and improve organizational information security, yet our knowledge of what motivates them to do so remains limited. For example, most extant research relies on mere portions of protection motivation theory (PMT) and has focused on isolated behaviors, thus limiting the generalizability of findings to isolated issues, rather than addressing the global set of protective security behaviors. Here, we investigate the motivations surrounding this larger behavioral set by assessing maladaptive rewards, response costs, and fear alongside traditional PMT components. We extend PMT by showing that: (1) security education, training, and awareness (SETA) efforts help form appraisals; (2) PMT’s applicability to organizational rather than personal contexts depends on insiders’ organizational commitment levels; and (3) response costs provide the link between PMT’s appraisals. We show in detail how organizational commitment is the mechanism through which organizational security threats become personally relevant to insiders and how SETA efforts influence many PMT-based components.

Citations

• What Do Systems Users Have to Fear? Using Fear Appeals to Engender Threats and Fear that Motivate Protective Security Behaviors1
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• Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change
• A META‐ANALYTIC REVIEW OF ATTITUDINAL AND DISPOSITIONAL PREDICTORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR
• A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change1
• A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment
• Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: An Examination of Construct Validity
• Development of a measure of workplace deviance.
• Beyond Deterrence: An Expanded View of Employee Computer Abuse1
• Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change.

Cited by

• Examining the Differential Effectiveness of Fear Appeals in Information Security Management Using Two-Stage Meta-Analysis