The Effect of Motivation on the Behavioral Intention to Protect Industrial Techniques of High-Tech Firms’ Employees

Sangwoo Lee, Boyoung Kim () and Ureta Vaquero Ivan
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Sangwoo Lee: Seoul Business School, aSSIST University, Seoul 03767, Republic of Korea
Boyoung Kim: Seoul Business School, aSSIST University, Seoul 03767, Republic of Korea
Ureta Vaquero Ivan: Department of Business Economics, Health and Social Care, The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, 6928 Manno, Switzerland

Administrative Sciences, 2024, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-18

Abstract: This study defines the intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors that influence the prevention of industrial technology leakage by high-tech company employees. It also investigates how these factors affect the employees’ intention to prevent leakage. Based on the TPB (theory of planned behavior), this study analyzes the relationship between “attitude toward behavior”, “subjective norm”, and “perceived behavioral control”, which in turn influences the behavioral intention to prevent such leakage. Specifically, an online survey was conducted among office workers in South Korea’s high-tech industry. A total of 200 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. As the analysis results show, intrinsic motivation has a positive effect on attitude toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Extrinsic motivation has a positive effect on subjective norms and perceived behavioral control but a negative effect on attitudes toward behavior. This study also proved, based on the TPB, that the three variables impact the behavioral intention to prevent technology leakage. These results confirm that, in the high-tech sector, where employees are highly specialized and autonomous, technical security behaviors are primarily influenced by individual professional ethics and judgment rather than by organizational regulation or extrinsic motivation.

Keywords: industrial technology protection; motivation; theory of planned behavior; behavioral intention; high-tech firm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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