The direct and indirect effect of organizational justice on employee intention to comply with information security policy: The case of Ethiopian banks

Organizations today are greatly challenged by information security threats, which is often due to employee non-compliance with the information security policies (ISPs). By drawing on the organizational justice and citizenship behavior theories, this study develops a theoretical model that examines how each dimension of organizational justice such as perceived distributive justice, perceived procedural justice, perceived informational justice, and perceived interpersonal justice and citizenship behavior affect employees’ ISP compliance intention. We empirically tested the proposed theoretical model with 276 survey responses collected from IS users in governmental and private banks in Ethiopia. Employees’ perceived fairness of security policy compliance outcome, procedures used to design and implement security policies, adequacy of information regarding security policies and interpersonal treatment employees received during ISPs enforcement are found to directly influence employee ISP compliance intention. The study results also suggest that security related citizenship behavior partially mediates the effects of procedural justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice on ISP compliance intention. This study contributes to the behavioral information security literature by showing the significance of perceived organizational justice and citizenship behavior on employee ISP compliance behaviors. Our results are also helpful for organizations seeking to improve their employees ISP compliance behavior.