Abstract

Nowadays, most organizations accumulate massive electronic information including sensitive and proprietary information. This article introduces a theoretical model to investigate the relationship between employee happiness and their intentions to leak such proprietary corporate information. Additionally, the Happiness-Ethical- Leaking (HaEL) model aims at two separate types of leaking proprietary information including leaking for ethical reasons, referred also in literature as ‘whistleblowing,’ and leaking for unethical reasons, known as ‘sabotage.’ The proposed HaEL model hypothesizes the role of employee’s job satisfaction, happiness, perceived organizational ethical commitment, commitment to the organization, and their role on the two types of intentions to leak proprietary corporate information. Brief discussions and recommendations for validation of the HaEL model are provided.

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