Management Information Systems Commons^™

Security Is Local: The Influence Of The Immediate Workgroup On Information Security, Dawei David Wang, Alexandra Durcikova, Alan R. Dennis

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Information security is a multilevel phenomenon with employee security decisions being influenced by macrolevel factors (e.g., organizational policies), mesolevel factors (e.g., one's immediate workgroup—IW), and microlevel factors (e.g., individual personalities). We argue that an employee's local IW (i.e., immediate supervisor and coworkers) has a strong effect on security. This paper focuses on the effects of these mesolevel factors in the presence of macro-and microlevel factors. Drawing on the social structure and social learning framework as well as workgroup research, we hypothesize that the security behavior of an employee's IW supervisor and coworkers moderated by the nature of these relationships influences …