Impact of Cyberloafing on Team Potency & Team Conflict at the Workplace.

AuthorGupta, Megha

Introduction

One of the biggest disruptors of this modern age is the internet. It has been the cornerstone to many emerging opportunities and developments of this era. Internet has not only enhanced business opportunities, but also increased the productivity of employees (Huma, Hussain, Thurasamy & Malik, 2017). The emergence of the net has led to the development of virtual teams and has enabled collaboration across geographies with ease. Apart from this, the internet has also helped in marketing of products and services effectively, reducing the product cycle times and diminishing costs (Anandarajan, Simmers & Igbaria, 2000). Internet is not only an integral part of the operations of an organization but it also results in favorable outcomes with respect to employee efficiency and communication (Yan et al, 2015). While the internet has proven to be so beneficial, it has a flip side as well. A pertinent problem plaguing corporations is its personal usage at the workplace during working hours (Ramayah, 2010). This counterproductive behavior is known as cyberloafing (Uche, George & Abiola, 2017).

Cyberloafing is a new way for employees to be engrossed in workplace deviance behavior (Baturay & Toker, 2015). Surfing non-work related and news websites, chatting online, playing games, booking tickets, downloading music, shopping, performing personal banking, updating personal website/blogs/ social media pages, using emails, viewing adult content and gambling comprise cyberloafing (Weatherbee, 2010). Needless to say, it has become a matter of growing concern for organizations (Kim & Jeong, 2015). Internet usage for personal work is threatening for organizations as it reduces employee efficiency and productivity (Yylmaz et al, 2015). In fact, researchers have established that cyberloafing diminishes productivity of employees by 30-40 % (Lim & Teo, 2005). In addition, it increases security threats and unnecessary network bandwidth consumption (Lim & Chen, 2012); and has an impact on economic losses of enterprises (Malachowski, 2005). While other counter-productive work behaviors like coming late, taking long lunch breaks, chatting with co-workers are easily recognized as loafing behaviors, cyberloafing is not as evident (Zhang et al, 2015).

Further, cyberloafing can also put organizations at risk when employees resort to downloading music, viewing offensive content and/ or accessing pornographic sites (Blanchard & Henle, 2008). With such alarming consequences, monitoring and reducing the prevalence of cyberloafing is of great concern, thus making it a worthwhile research theme for academicians and practitioners alike. Organizations today are increasingly relying on teams to function, innovate and create value (Felps, Mitchell & Byington, 2006). A team is a group of individuals sharing space, ideas, experiences, and knowledge with a common goal in mind (Van den Bossche, Gijselaers, Segers & Kirschner, 2006). However, in order to understand that goal, people in teams need to integrate various perspectives and have a shared understanding. This is attainable only through interactive and meaningful discussion (Roschelle, 1992). To be able to share ideas and communicate within the teams the social context needs to be such that it enriches the willingness of individuals to engage with one another (Barron, 2003). A study by Barron (2003) revealed that the relational facet of interpersonal context, like bonding and relationships, while working in teams can stimulate the team. Hence, for organizations it is imperative to provide a thriving environment such that it nourishes the zeal of employees to involve and work effectively in teams.

Corporations primarily function through teams, hence, we were keen to probe how a phenomenon like cyberloafing, a pervasive issue for companies and managers, has an impact on team dynamics. Despite it being an area of concern, rarely studies have concentrated on the influence of cyberloafing on team variables. Therefore, in the current study we are fixating our attention on the impact of cyberloafing on employees' perceptions of team potency and team conflict.

This paper has two significant contributions. First, it extends previous research on cyberloafing and analyzes its impact on team potency and conflict. Second, our work provides some plausible methods and strategies for practitioners to reduce the extent of cyberloafing.

Cyberloafing

'Cyberloaung' is described as the act of voluntarily using the company's internet services for non-work related purposes during working hours (Lim, 2002; Lim & Chen, 2012). Cyberloafing has been considered as a workplace deviant behavior (Lim, 2002). Workplace deviance is defined as a deliberate act of an employee to violate organizational norms like well-being of the organization and its members (Lebron, Tabak, Shkoler & Rabenu, 2018; Lim, 2002). This can range from dishonesty, gossiping, and absenteeism (Goldberg & Waldman, 2000), to more severe deviant behaviors like aggression and theft at the workplace (Lim, 2002). Loafing has existed in organization since time immemorial but with the advent of internet and its indispensable role in organizations, cyberloafing has emerged as a relentless form of loafing. It is not only a convenient way of wasting time, as one can resort to this mechanism by sitting on one's seat or computer system, but is also difficult to monitor (Lim, 2002).

Historically, studies have used varied terminologies to explain the concept of cyberloafing. These include cyberslacking (Bortolani & Favretto, 2009), cyberbludging (Bortolani & Favretto, 2009), personal web use (PWU) (Mahatanankoon, Anandarajan & Igbaria, 2004), cyberslouching (Urbaczewski & Jessup, 2002), internet abuse (Anandrajan et al, 2000), junk computing (Guthrie & Gray, 1996), internet misuse (Lavoie & Pychyl, 2001) and non-work related computing (Chun & Bock, 2006). Ultimately, they all describe cyberloafing as an unproductive use of the internet at the workplace that results in procrastination of work and wastage of time and resources, thus making it a workplace deviant behavior (Martin, Brock, Buckley & Ketchen, 2010). For our study, we define the terminology cyberloafing as "the personal use of internet and e-mail while at work" (Bortolani & Favretto, 2009). In a study by Grover (2014) it was revealed that 64% of a sample of 1,000 workers in US surfed the Internet for some personal activity during the working hours. It is vital that managers ensure there is no lapse in their monitoring strategy regarding usage of internet for personal interest during business hours. To do so, organizations have implemented some mechanisms of control that include internet usage policies (Moody & Siponen, 2013), blockage of access to certain websites and imparting punishment to the offenders (Baturay & Toker, 2015). In addition, companies are also supervising the internet usage pattern and behavior through software (Moody & Siponen, 2013). However, despite these processes in place, organizations fail to prevent cyberloafing (Al-Shuaibi, Shamsudin & Subramaniam, 2013). This very fact excites researchers to delve into gaining an understanding of antecedents of cyberloafing.

Conversely, there are limited studies conducted on explaining the potential outcomes of cyberloafing. There are researchers who have looked at the influence of cyberloafing on job quality, productivity (Boxall & Macky, 2014), and organizational commitment (Niaei, Peidaei, & Nasiripour, 2014). However, scholars have barely investigated the effect of cyberloafing on team dynamics (Al-Shuaibi et al., 2013). Past research highlights that organizations also report losses due to the loss of cohesion and performance of the team (Al-Shuaibi et al., 2013). Hence, there is a need to identify the extent of impact of internet misuse on employees' perceptions of team related variables which will subsequently determine the mechanisms and interventions used in response to cyberloafing (Betts, Setterstrom, Pearson & Totty, 2014). In our work, we have concentrated on cyberloafing and its relationship with team variables--team potency and team conflict. Though these concepts have been studied in literature separately, the dynamics between cyberloafing and the two team variables has...

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