Cyberloafing at the workplace: gain or drain on work?

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. This study examined the impact of cyberloafing on employees' emotion and work. We also examined gender differences in employees' perception towards cyberloafing. In general, respondents felt that some form of cyberloafing at work was acceptable. Men were also more likely to report that cyberloafing has a positive impact on work compared to women. As well, our findings suggest that browsing activities have a positive impact on employees' emotion while emailing activities have a negative impact. Results of our study provide useful insights for researchers and managers in understanding employees' attitudes towards cyberloafing, and how cyberloafing can result in gain or drain in employees' work productivity. 1. Introduction In recent years, abuse of company's Internet resources by employees has received a considerable amount of attention among organisational scholars. The term cyberslacking or cyberloafing has been used to describe voluntary acts of employees using their companies' Internet access for non-work-related purposes during working hours (Lim 2002). Scholars generally con-ceptualised cyberloafing as a form of workplace production deviance (e.g. Lim 2002, Lim and Teo 2005). This is because these cyber activities (browsing and emailing) which are conducted at the workplace during work time constitute an unproductive use of time and detract employees from completing their work demands. Earlier studies consistently suggested that cyberloafing is prevalent and is a perennial cause of concern for many companies (Lim et al. 2002). A survey conducted in 2005 by WebSense.com (www.websense.com), an Internet monitoring company , revealed that *61% of American employees engaged in cyberloafing of some form. More recently, the Web@Work survey conducted by Websense.com in 2006 found that the average American employee spent about 24% of his working hours on cyberloafing activities. This puts the average amount of time spent …