Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Management, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
3 Ph.D. Student in Business Management, University of Humanities, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran
4 Professor, Department of Management, School of Management, Imam Ali (AS) Officer University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
1. Introduction
Today's successful organizations are those that have created or acquired new knowledge and transformed it into practical methods to improve their activities, and this is achieved through adherence to professional ethics principles such as privacy, fundamental freedoms, moral responsibility, a value-based and responsible attitude, a sense of cooperation and ownership, and confidentiality (Riyazet-Kash, Khayat-Moghaddam, and Rezaei-Far, 2018). Because the rapid growth of e-commerce and the increasing number of online businesses have led to increased consumer concerns about ethical issues surrounding online shopping (Hamidianpour and Izadi, 2018).
Given the importance and necessity of observing ethical principles by e-businesses in order to retain customers on the one hand and develop and grow the business on the other, and knowing that failure to observe these principles causes customers to distance themselves from e-business, this research has attempted to extract ethical criteria in e-businesses and then examine these criteria in terms of their importance and impact, and ultimately take a positive step towards structuring ethical frameworks in the field of e-business.
2. Literature Review
Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behaviour by organizations in both strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. An ethical approach is essential for the success of companies and for presenting a positive image of the company (Chitrangda, 2014). Ethics-based practical approaches are a conscious adherence to ethical standards that guide individuals and businesses to follow certain rules in their interactions with people inside and outside the organization (Ononogbo, Jejuel, & Adja, 2016). One of the perspectives of modern management is that by observing the ethical responsibility associated with organizations and their stakeholders, these financial institutions can achieve long-term success in e-business (Turbin, King, Lee, Warkentin, Chung, & Chang, 2000).
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Toriyakira states that ethical issues, in turn, have affected the reputation and survival of small and medium-sized enterprises, especially in developing countries. He considers the key to protecting the company's interests against competitors to be compliance with ethical issues on the part of the company, and to gain awareness of these issues, he suggests education and raising the level of awareness in the field of ethics for managers and personnel.
3. Methodology
The present study is applied research. This research is qualitative because it uses the grounded theory method, and on the other hand, it is quantitative because it uses the structural equation modeling method and the hierarchical method; therefore, this research is of a mixed type. The number of members of the target population in the interview stage is the total number of active managers in the field of e-business in Tehran. Among these people, 23 people were selected as the sample size. In the second stage, 209 people were selected from 462 personnel working in the field of e-business using the Cochran formula as a statistical sample. The method of selecting the members of the statistical sample in the first stage was the purposive sampling method. In the second stage, the simple random sampling method was used.
In order to analyze the data received from the interviews with experts, the grounded theory method was used. Grounded theory is a research theory method that is suitable for studying phenomena that are not well understood or explained, or for gaining new insights into a familiar phenomenon. The goal of grounded theory is to produce a theory in the form of a set of interrelated hypotheses that are obtained through continuous comparison of data and are highly abstract.
To analyze the impact of the components used in structural equation modeling, LISREL 16 software was used. In addition, the AHP method was used to prioritize the extracted components, for which purpose Excel software was used to determine the geometric mean between the experts and Expert Choice 11 software.
4. Results
Immediately after the interview, the first step in the analysis was carried out through the conceptualization of the data. For this purpose, the interview data were carefully studied and examined, and the extracted data were coded under common codes. In fact, all the stages of analysis and coding, discovery of categories, description of categories according to their characteristics and open coding table were carried out. These concepts were carried out under the title of initial coding.
Next, we started a confirmatory factor analysis on the mediating variable, namely customer loyalty, and the dependent variable, namely e-business growth. For this purpose, we started to examine the fit of the questions. As shown in Table 1, all the factor loadings obtained are above 0.5, which means that the fit of all the manifest variables to measure the mediating and dependent variables is confirmed and acceptable. In other words, all the manifest variables are fit to measure the defined latent variables.
After examining the fit of the obvious variables and recording the results, it is time to build the research model. For this purpose, a model was built. Figure 2 shows the values of the path coefficient between all independent variables with the mediating and dependent variables, and the significance of the relationship between most of the independent variables with the mediating and dependent variables was confirmed, and finally we built the final model along with displaying the T-Value. The only variable whose relationship with both the mediating and dependent variables was not confirmed was the fulfillment of commitments. The results are shown in Figure 1.
Finally, the geometric mean of the experts' opinions was entered into the Expert Choice software for prioritization, and the ethical dimensions questioned in terms of importance were: customer information security, customer privacy, gaining customer trust, fulfilling commitments, and updating services.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
In the present study, ethical criteria in e-businesses and their prioritization were extracted using a mixed approach. After receiving the opinions of e-business managers and extracting sentences from the responses of these managers and also from several articles, 48 related sentences were extracted. Finally, 22 subcategories were identified. Subsequently, and after axial coding, finally five ethical criteria were identified: customer information security, customer privacy, gaining customer trust, fulfilling commitments, and updating services from the perspective of e-business managers.
According to the results of the research, it can be suggested that e-businesses should focus a lot on gaining customer trust and trying to create a sense of security and a close relationship with customers, and this will only be possible through observing ethics, not verbally but in a practical and tangible way for customers. Also, forming an ethics committee in businesses and continuously following up on this committee to ensure that businesses observe ethical principles can be somewhat effective. It is also suggested that businesses consider the presented model and engage in ethics-based planning for their activities.
Keywords
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