Appearance of Dark Clouds? - An Empirical Analysis of Users' Shadow Sourcing of Cloud Services

Encouraged by recent practical observations of employees’ usage of public cloud services for work tasks instead of mandatory internal support systems, this study investigates end users’ utilitarian and normative motivators based on the theory of reasoned action. Partial least squares analyses of survey data comprising 71 computer end users at work, employed across various companies and industries, show that perceived benefits for job performance, social influences of the entire work environment, and employees’ lack of identification with the organizational norms and values drive insiders to threaten the security of organizational IT assets.