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Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine privacy issues in the e-commerce context from a power-responsibility equilibrium theory (PRE) perspective. Design/methodology/approach The data was collected using an online survey (n = 335) from online shopping consumers. This study used partial least squares-structural equation modelling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) techniques to empirically examine the proposed relationships. Findings A lack of corporate privacy responsibility and regulatory protection can deprive consumers of privacy empowerment and damage consumer trust to trigger privacy concerns and subsequent defensive responses. Also, the fsQCA revealed five causal configurations to explain high consumer defensive behaviours. Research limitations/implications This study identifies the importance of PRE theory in the privacy context. Consumer privacy concerns, privacy empowerment and trust are established as strong mediators between corporate/regulatory privacy protection efforts and consumer backlash. The application of fsQCA verified that consumer privacy behaviour can be better explained by different configurations of the same causal antecedents. Practical implications The findings highlight the importance of increasing trust and privacy empowerment as mechanisms to manage privacy concerns and consumer backlash through responsible organisational and regulatory privacy protections. The importance of balancing power and responsibility dynamics for maintaining a healthy information exchange environment is identified. Originality/value This study extends the PRE framework of privacy to include corporate privacy responsibility, privacy empowerment and trust. This is one of the first studies to explore both antecedents and outcomes of privacy empowerment. Also, the application of complexity theory and fsQCA to explain consumers’ defensive responses is novel to the literature.

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The utilization and governance of the internet and adjacent disruptive technologies have created numerous challenges to ensuring consumer online privacy. This study employs the power–responsibility equilibrium theory to explore emerging online privacy issues in the data‐driven marketplace. This exploratory study, based on semi‐structured interviews, explains why online shopping consumers are increasingly worried about their privacy and why they behave in a manner that could be detrimental to the consumer–vendor relationship. The findings suggest that deficiencies of corporate privacy responsibility and regulatory protection have deprived consumers of privacy empowerment. These deficiencies have also accentuated perceived privacy contract violations to trigger privacy concerns and subsequent defensive responses. We identify enhancement of consumer privacy empowerment and assuagement of privacy contract violations as two separate mechanisms of addressing online privacy issues. We also highlight the importance of addressing power and responsibility dynamics for maintaining a healthy information‐exchange environment.

PurposeHow employees connect with their work organisation and how it may play a role in their moral courage and ethical behaviour remain under-explored. This study, using Psychological Contract Theory, aims to explore how employee–organisation connectedness influences employees' moral courage and ethical behaviour.Design/methodology/approachThe hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) on data collected through a questionnaire survey from 212 Australian healthcare professionals.FindingsEmployee connectedness with their work organisations showed a significant and direct impact on ethical behaviour. Along with moral courage, connectedness explained over half of the variance in ethical behaviour. Furthermore, moral courage partially mediated the effect of employee connectedness on ethical behaviour.Research limitations/implicationsThe overall theoretical implication of this study is that psychological contracts between employees and their organisations operationalised through employee–organisation connectedness can explain the role of moral courage in ethical behaviour.Practical implicationsWith increasing borderless management of organisations, organisational connectedness can be a critical factor in developing employees' moral courage and ethical behaviour within organisations. Socialisation interventions can be useful to promote employee–organisation connectedness.Originality/valueThe study developed a higher-order connectedness model and validated it with PLS-SEM. The study provides novel empirical evidence on the relationships between employee–organisation connectedness, moral courage and ethical behaviour.

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Summary With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.