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Operational Factors Affecting the Confidentiality of Proprietary Digital Assets

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Operational Factors Affecting the Confidentiality of Proprietary Digital Assets Operational Factors Affecting the Confidentiality of Proprietary Digital Assets DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Brett Joseph Massimino, M.B.A. Graduate Program in Business Administration The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: John V. Gray, Co-Advisor Kenneth K. Boyer Co-Advisor James A. Hill Elliot Bendoly Copyrighted by Brett Joseph Massimino 2014 Abstract The leakage of an organization’s proprietary, digital assets to unauthorized parties can be a catastrophic event for any organization. The magnitude of these events have been recently underscored by the Target data breach, in which 70 million consumer credit card accounts were compromised, and financial costs are expected to exceed $1 billion. Digital assets have steadily progressed beyond low-value data and information, and into high-value knowledge- based domains. Failures to protect these latter types of digital assets can have even greater implications for firms or even macroeconomic conditions. Using the Target event as an illustrative motivation, we highlight the importance of two relatively-unexplored topics within the domain of digital asset protections - (1) vendor management, and (2) worker adherence to standard, well-codified procedures and technologies. We explicitly consider each of these topics through the separate empirical efforts detailed in this dissertation. Our first empirical effort examines the effects of sourcing and location decisions on the confidentiality of digital assets. We frame our study within a product-development dyad, ii with a proprietary, digital asset being shared between partners. We treat confidentiality as a performance dimension that is influenced by each organization accessing the asset. Specifically, we empirically investigate the realm of electronic video game development and the illegal distribution activities of these products. We employ a series of web-crawling data collection programs to compile an extensive secondary dataset covering the legitimate development activities for the industry. We then harvest data from the archives of a major, black-market distribution channel, and leverage these data to derive a novel, product-level measure of asset confidentiality. We examine the interacting factors of industrial clustering (agglomeration) and national property rights legislations in affecting this confidentiality measure. We find that (1) firms within industry clusters tend to have significantly higher levels of asset confidentiality, (2) strong national property rights tend to suppress this benefit, and (3) these effects are greatly amplified for client organizations. Our second empirical effort seeks insight into the compliance behaviors of workers with tasks related to digital asset protections. Here, we frame a general, dual-task setting in which a worker has a procedural task as a primary responsibility (e.g., manufacturing), but is also requested to comply with a discretionary, protection-oriented task. We draw from Goal Setting Theory and task switching theories to elicit two factors which may significantly impact the worker’s performance on each of these tasks: (1) the level of resource utilization for the worker, and (2) the level of attribution (group vs. individual) held for the protection- iii oriented task. In our analyses, we examine several performance variables, including: task performance, task switching and sequencing behaviors, and goal achievement levels. Through a controlled, laboratory experiment, we find that individual accountability on the protection task positively relates to the subjects’ performance on both tasks. We also find evidence for a negative, nonlinear relationship between resource utilization and performance of the protection-oriented task, and find that this relationship is further moderated by the protection-tasks type of outcome attribution. iv Vita August 2004 B.S. Engineering, Computer Engineering; Summa cum Laude The University of Pittsburgh August 2009 M.B.A, Supply Chain Management; Lehigh University August 2009 to present .......................Doctoral Candidate, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Business Administration v Table of Contents Abstract..................................................................................................................................................ii Vita .........................................................................................................................................................v Table of Contents................................................................................................................................vi List of Tables ......................................................................................................................................xii List of Figures....................................................................................................................................xiv Chapter 1: Introduction.......................................................................................................................1 The DIKW Hierarchy .....................................................................................................................7 The Evolution of Proprietary Assets ..........................................................................................10 Digital Assets and Asset Confidentiality During the 1980’s................................................12 Digital Assets and Asset Confidentiality During the 1990’s................................................15 The Current State of Proprietary Assets.................................................................................17 vi Challenges in Protecting Proprietary Digital Assets .................................................................21 The Target Breach of 2013.......................................................................................................24 Supply Chain Challenges for Asset Confidentiality ..............................................................31 Worker Behavioral Challenges for Asset Confidentiality (Chapter 3) ...............................52 Chapter 2: Protecting the Confidentiality of Proprietary, Digital Assets - The Effects of Industrial Agglomeration and National Property Rights..............................................................67 Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................68 Introduction....................................................................................................................................69 Theory and Hypotheses ................................................................................................................72 Direct Effects of Industrial Agglomeration...........................................................................73 Direct Effects of National Property Rights (NPR) Protections .........................................76 Moderating Effects of National Property Rights (NPR) Protections................................78 Empirical Context, Data, and Operationalization.....................................................................79 Dependent Variable...................................................................................................................81 vii Independent Variables ..............................................................................................................87 Control Variables .......................................................................................................................89 Sample Size Attrition.................................................................................................................91 Analysis............................................................................................................................................95 Sensitivity and Post-hoc Analyses ........................................................................................ 104 Practical Significance of Findings......................................................................................... 110 Discussion .................................................................................................................................... 113 Chapter 3: Resource Utilization, Secondary Task Outcome Attribution, and Secondary Goal Achievement .................................................................................................................................... 118 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ 119 Introduction................................................................................................................................. 120 Theoretical Bases and Related Literature ................................................................................ 131 Goal Setting Theory ............................................................................................................... 131 Task Switching and the Pursuit of Multiple Goals ............................................................ 155 viii Summary of Contextual Factors Relevant for This Study ................................................ 182 Hypotheses..................................................................................................................................
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