Determination of system and processes employed by the property industry to manage information ethics in Gauteng South Africa

Abstract

The South African property sector is characterised by property practitioner firms that fail to comply with the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) code of conduct and firms having inefficient systems which are unable to combat hacking and cybercrime in the sector. Although property practitioner firms have systems and processes in place, there are still instances of unethical behaviour. Failure to prevent client personal information from being leaked is still a major problem in the sector, this issue can be addressed by demonstrating due diligence with respect to safeguarding sensitive information. The accuracy of information is also a problem in the sector and requires firms to resort to analysing collected data before capturing it, in order to maintain accuracy. The sector encounter illegal access to systems including breaking the password protected websites and password protection on a computer system. The objectives for this study were to investigate the extent to which firms enforce Information Ethics (IE), explore the systems and processes put in place by firms to enforce IE and to explore the challenges experienced by the firms in the Gauteng province when enforcing IE. The study was qualitative in nature and indepth interviews were conducted to gather information from five managers and five employees within the firm situated in Gauteng province. The study found that these property practitioner firms enforce IE to a certain extent. These firms use (22) systems and processes to enforce IE and experienced (5) challenges during the enforcement of IE. The study concludes that these property practitioner firms enforce IE using different systems and processes and experience challenges during enforcement. The list of IE enforcement systems and processes and challenges identified in this study will assist policy makers in compiling IE policies. The findings will also assist firms in IE enforcement and reduction of IE enforcement challenges.