Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Abusive Management On The New Generation Employees’ Cyberlofing Behavior

With the rapid development of information technology,the Internet has become an important medium for enterprises to transmit information and carry out their work.However,the widespread use of mobile phones,computers and other connected devices not only provides high efficiency and convenience for enterprises,but also causes the phenomenon that employees use the network for entertainment activities,which leads to slow work.As a product of the information age,cyberloafing not only reduces employee engagement and performance,but also seriously hinders the development and improvement of the organisation as a whole.In recent years,academics have begun to focus on the antecedents and outcomes of cyberloafing behavior,but in the past,scholars have mainly focused on the relationship between employees’ individual personality traits and cyberloafing behavior,and have rarely investigated whether negative leadership styles at the organisational level have an impact on employees’ cyberloafing behavior.As one of the representatives of negative leadership styles,abusive management reveals the unfair management of subordinates by supervisors in the organisation,and the abusive management style may lead to resistance behavior of employees,so this study focuses on the influence mechanism between abusive management and cyberloafing behavior.In addition,along with the intergenerational changes in the age composition of enterprise employees,the new generation of employees born in the 1990 s and 2000 s have occupied an important position in the enterprise.Such employees,born in the era of rapid development of the Internet,are more likely to take counter-productive behaviors when they suffer from unfair management,as they have poor anti-pressure ability and strong self-awareness.Based on the consideration of real-life management issues such as abuse management and cyberloafing and the current status of theoretical research related to them,this paper analyses how abuse management affects the cyberloafing behavior of new generation employees through the chain-mediating effect of workplace anxiety and work alienation,and how employees’ personal regulation focus on abuse management and workplace anxiety from the perspective of affective event theory,resource conservation theory and self-determination theory.The study integrates the proposed hypotheses and constructs a research model to explore the mechanism of the impact of abuse management on new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior.In this study,416 valid sample data were collected through questionnaires from new generation employees in Gansu,Liaoning and Zhejiang,and a regression model was developed using SPSS 26 and Mplus 8.3 statistical software to conduct an empirical analysis to test the proposed hypotheses and draw the following conclusions:(1)Abuse management has a significant positive effect on new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior;(2)Abuse management has a significant positive effect on workplace anxiety;(3)Workplace anxiety mediates the mechanism of action between abuse management and new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior;(4)Abuse management positively promotes work alienation;(5)work alienation mediates the mechanism of action between abuse management and new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior;(6)workplace anxiety and work alienation mediated the chain of action between abuse management and new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior;(7)promotional regulatory focus negatively moderated the effect of abuse management on workplace anxiety and preventional regulatory focus positively moderated the effect of abuse management on workplace anxiety;(8)promotional regulation focuses on negatively regulating the chain mediating effect of abuse management on the new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior through workplace anxiety and work alienation,while preventional regulation focuses on positively regulating the chain mediating effect of abuse management on the new generation employees’ cyberloafing behavior through workplace anxiety and work alienation.The findings extend the research on the influence of negative leadership styles on cyberloafing behavior in organisational contextual factors,reveal the chain-mediating effect of workplace anxiety and work alienation,expand the boundary conditions of the influence of abusive management on cyberloafing behavior,and enrich the research on the behavior of the new generation of employees.It also provides corresponding management insights for enterprises: firstly,enterprises should change their management style to cope with the phenomenon of cyberloafing;secondly,managers should always pay attention to the work emotions of new generation employees to alleviate their anxiety;in addition,enterprises should develop management systems for employees with different traits;finally,to reduce the alienation between new generation employees and their work and increase their work engagement.