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When pluralistic ignorance about cyberloafing is increased, individuals engage more in cyberloafing. Cyberloafing has become a great challenge in business organisations, and it is believed that many organisations do not complete their daily activities as a result of employee cyberloafing. Using the social norms theory as the main theoretical framework, the current study aims to assess the effects of prescriptive social norms on employee cyberloafing with the moderating effects of power distance and co-worker interdependency.

The data sample included 237 employees from six large organisations in the service sector. This study used a survey to collect data at different times and analysed the data using hierarchal regression and Hayes Process Macro.

Findings revealed that there exists a positive and significant impact of supervisors' approval of cyberloafing on employees' cyberloafing. Co-workers' approval of cyberloafing does not have any impact on employee cyberloafing. Power distance was found to moderate the relationship between supervisors' approval of cyberloafing and employees' cyberloafing. However, co-workers' interdependency did not moderate the relationship between co-workers' approval of cyberloafing and employees' cyberloafing.

This research examines employees' cyberloafing behaviours and highlights the adverse consequences of prescriptive social norms in a work environment characterised by co-workers' interdependence and power distance.

Scholars are increasingly focusing on the adverse effects of digitization on human lives in personal and professional contexts. Cyberloafing is one such effect and digitization-related workplace behavior that has garnered attention in both academic and mainstream media. However, the existing literature is fragmented and needs to be consolidated to generate a comprehensive and contemporary overview of cyberloafing research and map its current intellectual boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on systematic literature review (SLR) in cyberloafing and cyberslacking in the workplace.

A SLR is conducted to assimilate the existing research. A total of 87 studies selected through a robust protocol are analyzed through content analysis.

A total of four thematic research areas and inherent gaps are identified, including conceptualization, operationalization, antecedents and stakeholders and consequences. Results are used to assimilate thematic gaps and potential research questions (RQs) to be addressed by future scholars. To advance cyberloafing research, the authors propose a theoretically grounded comprehensive framework based on the SLR findings.

Our study's novelty rests in its state-of-the-art synthesis of cyberloafing research, which encompasses a broader scope than prior SLRs. Furthermore, developing a theoretically grounded comprehensive framework for advancing future research is a unique contribution of this study.

Cyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.

Using a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.

Based on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.

This work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.

Previous studies on cyberloafing have so far not focused on the interlinkages among push factors, pull factors, consequences of actions and value orientations of the employees in a comprehensive manner. The purpose of this study is to close that gap by integrating push-pull theory with means-end chain framework.

Using a soft-laddering technique, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 Indian employees from various organizations with prior written consent. After performing the content analysis and preparation of ladders, an implication matrix and a hierarchical value map were constructed using the LadderUX tool.

“Upholding conversational conformity,” “achieving efficiency through noise cancellation,” “addressing occasional requirements,” “social networking as a coping mechanism,” “staying informed and sharing opinions,” “attempting job or profile alteration” and “fulfilling transactional obligations” turned out to be the seven prominent means-end chain patterns, with their respective push-pull factors, consequences and value orientations. This study also suggested the multifaceted character of cyberloafing in a continuum, from “serious-destructive” to “minor-positive” to “facilitative-productive.”

This study has been conducted by focusing on cyberloafing at physical workplaces and not in the context of distributed work environments.

The findings of this study will enable organizations to frame an appropriate set of guidelines to control this behavior.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to integrate the push-pull theory and means-end chain framework to explore the nuances of cyberloafing among employees.

Despite the use in companies of policy and control mechanisms to tackle cyberloafing, these practices are still popular among employees. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that control systems alone are unable to deter cyberloafing because they are eventually perceived as a sort of “ineffectual dog that may bark a lot, but ultimately does not bite.” Instead, control systems are only expected to deter cyberloafing if employees view them as leading to punitive consequences.

First, given the easy visibility of cyberloafing activities, the paper proposes a design for control systems that not only includes perceptions of organizational control (monitoring), but also perceptions of the supervisor's physical proximity (proximity). Data are collected from university administration and services personnel, whose main working tool is the computer. They all have internet access and individual e‐mail, a stable physical location at work, and a supervisor. Multiple hierarchical regressions are used to test whether in reality proximity and monitoring are unable to decrease cyberloafing unless they interact together with employees' fear of formal punishment (punishment).

Only by interacting together and with punishment are proximity and monitoring able to deter cyber loafers from engaging in cyberloafing.

The study could suffer from mono‐method/source bias, and the university that supplied the sample has certain job conditions similar to those of the public sector, thus raising concerns about the generalizability of the results.

The results suggest that organizational managers should not only ensure that control systems are able to discover incidents and identify the perpetrators, but they should also follow them up with punitive consequences. Only if control systems are implemented together with punishment are they effective in eliciting perceived certainty among cyber loafers of being caught and sanctioned, and hence in “bringing them back on the right track.”

Despite the extensive use of control systems to deter cyberloafing, there are no previous empirical studies that have examined and supported the negative interacting effects of proximity, monitoring, and punishment on cyberloafing.

This study aims to test the extent to which current coercive control strategies receive research support in controlling deviant workplace Internet behavior, also called cyberloafing. Consequently, it examines the relationship between cyberloafing and three classic coercive variables: perceived organizational control (POC), fear of formal punishment (FFP) and physical leadership proximity (LPP) as sensed by the employee. The model tested suggests that perceptions of leader physical proximity (LPP) antecede both the organizational amount of control (POC) and FFP and these both ones, in turn, affect cyberloafing. Additionally, the model suggests that POC increases FFP.

Data were collected from 147 (19.4 percent) of the 758 non‐teaching staff at a Spanish public university. Accessibility of individual e‐mail accounts was similar for all employees. E‐mails asking for collaboration were sent in two phases. A questionnaire was posted on the university intranet and could be accessed by clicking on a link in the e‐mails.

Structural equation modeling results show that LPP is a significant positively associated antecedent of POC and FFP. Moreover, POC, in turn, decreases cyberloafing, while FFP increases it.

The researched employees have job conditions inherent to the peculiarities of the public sector which may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings in the private sector. The fear construct was assessed by a self‐supplied scale, and thus the presence of shades of other similar emotions could not be discounted. Findings provide a more understandable mechanism of the influence of supervisor proximity on cyberloafing.

These findings contribute to an understanding of the ways in which organizations can control cyberloafing and provide reservations about the intimidator strategy efficiency. Supervisor proximity through the employee's control senses appear as an effective strategy.

The study of the joint interaction of the cited coercive variables against cyberloafing is unprecedented.

This purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between workplace ostracism and cyberloafing, based on the premise of conservation of resources theory. Emotional exhaustion is tested as a mediator between workplace ostracism and cyberloafing, whereas facilitating conditions are predicted as a moderator that influences employees’ reaction to ostracism.

Survey data were collected via the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk. Partial least squares analysis, a variance-based structural equation modelling, was utilised to verify the research model.

The results show that both workplace ostracism and emotional exhaustion have a significant positive relationship with cyberloafing. Likewise, emotional exhaustion partially mediates the relationship between workplace ostracism and cyberloafing. Interestingly, facilitating conditions do not moderate the emotional exhaustion–cyberloafing relationship but do moderate the ostracism–cyberloafing relationship. Counterintuitively, the relationship between workplace ostracism and cyberloafing becomes stronger when facilitating conditions are high. A post hoc analysis has been conducted using PROCESS Macro to test the conditional indirect effect but was found not significant.

Previous studies have revealed the association between workplace ostracism with various negative work behaviours, such as knowledge hiding, knowledge hoarding and counterproductive work behaviours. This study has successfully identified that workplace ostracism can also result in cyberloafing, which has not been delved into previous works. This has subsequently provided managers with new perspectives regarding why employees engage in non-work-related online activities at work.

To perceive the reasons for misusing the internet at work, an activity known as cyberloafing, efforts were made to find a new approach to reduce this negative behavior among employees. Thus, this study aims to identify the antecedents of job embeddedness (JE) and their effects on cyberloafing among the employees of public universities in eastern Iran.

To this end, the antecedents of JE were first extracted by reviewing the literature in this regard. In the next step, the opinions of the expert team were taken into account to select five variables. Subsequently, the conceptual model and hypotheses were presented and tested through structural equation modeling. A 57-item questionnaire was then distributed among the employees of eastern Iranian universities, who were selected through random stratified sampling. Finally, the data collected from of 510 questionnaires were analyzed.

According to the findings, it can be argued that JE with its five antecedents of family support, work support, job flexibility, work practices and task significance is able to significantly reduce cyberloafing. Moreover, the full mediating role of JE was confirmed.

Cyberloafing is a term describing the actions of employees who use their internet access at work for personal purposes pretending to do legitimate work. It has been turned into a serious challenge in developing countries such as Iran. It is, therefore vital to identify its factors and antecedents to diminish the counterproductive behavior in the workplace.

This study aims to assess the nexus between perceived overqualification (POQ), anger, knowledge hiding, cyberloafing and harmonious passion (HP).

The authors obtained 264 responses from two public traded firms in Pakistan using a supervisor-subordinated nested design and a multi-time data collecting strategy using convenience sampling.

The study results indicate that POQ positively affects knowledge hiding and cyberloafing. The authors also found anger as a potential mediator in the direct association between POQ and cyberloafing. In addition, the findings suggest that the association between POQ, knowledge hiding and cyberloafing will be weak when individuals exhibit HP towards their job roles. The results of this research, when considered as a whole, provided support for all of the hypothesised direct and indirect linkages, which has important ramifications for both theory and practise.

This study has both theoretical and practical implications. Grounded on equity theory and relative deprivation theory, this paper asserts that HP should be used to decrease POQ affect. According to the authors, pro-environment employee actions may help build a pro-environment workplace culture as well as a pro-environment sense of responsibility, both of which can help to achieve significant pro-environment results.

This study builds on and fills in the gaps left by earlier research to better aid organisational researchers, practitioners and stakeholders in understanding how POQ, rage, information concealing, cyberloafing and harmonic passion interact with one another.

Prior research has found empirical evidence that procedural justice is an antecedent of cyberloafing in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to explore why that association is possible. It is argued that perceptions of procedural justice affect cyberloafing because unfair procedure places an employee in conflict with the organizational rules. Accordingly, this paper predicts that it is normative conflict rather than procedural justice that really prompts employees to retaliate against the organization by engaging in cyberloafing.

Data are collected from 147 (19.4 percent) of the 758 non‐teaching staff at a public university where internet usage policy to combat its improper use has been increasingly rigid. Structural equation modeling is used to test the predicted mediation.

The results show that procedural justice is an antecedent of the normative conflict that fully mediates the link between procedural justice and cyberloafing.

The subjects in this study reflect job conditions that are peculiar to the public sector. This may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings to the private sector. The findings provide a new explanation for the mechanics of the link between unfair/fair procedural perceptions and cyberloafing.

The findings contribute to a better understanding of the way procedural justice is able to monitor cyberloafing, and discusses how actions designed to promote procedural justice may be useful to the efficient management of normative conflict, hence, the normative process is able to stifle cyberloafing.

Employee perceptions of normative conflict are shown to mediate the relationship between procedural justice and cyberloafing. This is the first empirical test of this mediation.