The Moderating Effect of Neutralization Technique on Organizational Justice and Cyberloafing

While the advent of technology has revolutionized how businesses operate and how work is done, it has also opened up new avenues and opportunities for individuals to misbehave. This study focused on cyberloafing—the act of employees using their companies’ Internet access for personal purposes during work hours. Using the theoretical framework offered by research on neutralization techniques, we developed a model which suggested that when individuals perceived their organizations to be distributively, procedurally and interactionally unjust, they were likely to invoke the metaphor of the ledger as a neutralization technique to legitimize their subsequent engagement in the act of cyberloafing. Data were collected with the use of an electronic questionnaire and focus group interviews from 188 working adults with access to the Internet at the workplace. Results of moderated regression analyses empirical support for all of our hypotheses. Implications of our findings for organizational Internet policies are discussed.