Research On The Differential Effect Of Different Types Of Cyberloafing On Work Engagement And Management Implications

In recent years,employees'cyberloafing behavior during working hours has received amount of attention from organizational scholars.Cyberloafing has been used to describe the internet using behavior of employees in the workplace for non-work-related purpose.Scholars generally conceptualized cyberloafing as a kind of workplace deviant behavior,which will bring many negative effects to the organization,such like the decline of production efficiency and employees' work performance.However,some scholars believe that cyberloafing can have positive effects on employees and their work,such as generating positive emotions and improving their creativity.By using a questionnaire survey,we collected 412 questionnaires.Based on this data,we first summarized the features of current employees' cyberloafing activities,and then discussed the effects of different behavioral causes of cyberloafing on work engagement.Here are the major results:1)According to the frequency of cyberloafing activities,the ranking is information activity,social activity,leisure activity and virtual emotional activity;2)As for the differences of cyberloafing in each activities,it is found that cyberloafing has significant differences in age and position type,but has no significant differences in gender and education background;3)Different behavioral causes of cyberloafing have different effects on work engagement:development behavior and recovery behavior positively affects and has a predictive effect on work engagement;deviant behavior and addiction behavior negatively affects and has a predictive effect on work engagement.In order to get further understanding of employees' cyberloafing,we chose the semi structured interview from the qualitive research.Based on the "purposive sampling"and "snowball sampling",there are 10 employees and 7 managers are chosen to be the objects of the research.The main conclusions are drawn as follows:1)Employees'cyberloafing is widespread in organizations,the managers will notice this behavior but most of them don't distinguish what they are doing and why they cyberloafing;2)Generally,employees have a positive attitude toward cyberloafing and most of their reasons are self-oriented,while managers have lower acceptance and tolerance of cyberloafing;3)Most organizations usually don't have specific measures for regulating employees'cyberloafing,but managers always have their own way to handle it;4)Compared with network supervision,it is easier for employees to accept network limitation,which means organizational security is assured.At last,we combined the results of the questionnaire survey and the interview study,and suggest that managers and organizations should use a more comprehensive lens to look at employees' cyberloafing in the workplace.Finally,a series of suggestions have been made for better management,flexibility,and efficiency.We also proposed future research directions.