The interaction of work stressors and organizational sanctions on cyberloafing.

The Internet has changed the way organizations do business by offering rapid communication and enhanced information access and distribution. Further, the Internet enables organizations to decrease expenses, reduce product cycle times, and market goods and services more efficiently (Anandarajan et al., 2000). However, along with these benefits, the Internet provides employees with a high-tech method of shirking their duties. Although employees have long found ways of shirking such as personal phone calls or trips to the water cooler, cyberloafing enables employees to avoid work duties using modern technology. Cyberloafing refers to employees' use of their employers' Internet access and email during work hours for non-work-related purposes (Lim, 2002). This can include emailing jokes, surfing non-work-related Internet sites, online shopping, instant messaging, posting to newsgroups, and downloading music.

Previous research investigating cyberloafing is primarily descriptive (an exception is Lim, 2002). These studies have examined the frequency that employees engage in cyberloafing and the type of Internet site visited (Lim et al., 2002; Lim and Teo, 2005), as well as employer responses to cyberloafing such as Internet usage policies, monitoring software and filters, and discipline (e.g., Young and Case, 2004). Although description is a necessary first step when investigating a new construct, we believe it is time to move forward by investigating theoretical explanations for why employees cyberloaf. Thus, the current study proposes that employees cyberloaf to cope with certain types of workplace stressors like role ambiguity and role conflict, but not others like role overload. Further, cyberloafing will be more likely to be used as a coping method when employees perceive there are few, if any, sanctions for doing so.

It is important to empirically study cyberloafing because of its prevalence and detrimental consequences. First, cyberloafing is convenient for U.S. employees as nearly 40% have Internet access at work (eMarketer, 2003). A survey by Vault.com (2000) indicates that almost 88% of respondents surf non-work-related websites during working hours, with 66% surfing anywhere between ten minutes and one hour in an average workday. Likewise, 82% of employees send non-work-related emails during work hours and nearly 87% receive them. Indeed, a recent survey found cyberloafing was the most common distraction at work (Malachowski, 2005).

Although cyberloafing can have positive effects (e.g., increased creativity; Block, 2001), it has the potential to be quite costly for employers who allow this behavior to continue unchecked. Like other methods of shirking, cyberloafing may reduce productivity by as much as 30 to 40 percent and can cost companies $54 billion annually (Conlin, 2000). However, unlike other types of shirking, employees can flood computing resources with their personal use, which leads to clogged bandwidth and degraded system performance (Sipior and Ward, 2002). Cyberloafing also exposes companies to legal liability in the form of harassment (e.g., employees emailing sexist or racist jokes to co-workers), copyright infringement (e.g., employees using clipart found on the Internet without permission), defamation (e.g., disgruntled workers posting lies about a manager in a chat room), and negligent hiring (e.g., an employee with a history of violence cyberstalking a customer). In summary, we believe it is important to research the antecedents of cyberloafing in order to predict its occurrence and, thus, reduce the negative outcomes often associated with it. Below we discuss our model of cyberloafing as well as the theoretical and empirical support for it.

Stressors and Cyberloafing

Stress is a normal psychophysical response to demanding or taxing events in the environment (Selye, 1974). Some amount of stress is needed for normal functioning; however, if high levels of stress are experienced repeatedly, negative consequences to well-being may result (e.g., increased blood pressure, job dissatisfaction, depression). The environmental demands are often referred to as stressors while the resulting consequences are referred to as strains. However, the presence of stressors does not guarantee the occurrence of strains. Many theories emphasize the importance of coping as an intervening variable in the relationship between stressors and strains (Hart et al., 1993; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Strains that can potentially result from demanding stressors may be avoided with effective coping strategies. Thus, strain occurs only when individuals are unable to effectively cope with stressors in their environment.

We believe employees use cyberloafing to cope with stressors they experience at work. However, we are not examining the effectiveness of cyberloafing as a coping device in the current study. As Folkman and Lazarus (1980) emphasize, it is critical to first show that stressors induce the need to cope before investigating the relationship between coping methods and strains. This study represents a first step in demonstrating the relationship between stressors, coping, and strains by exploring if work stressors trigger the need to cyberloaf. Below we discuss role theory as it relates to three common work stressors, cyberloafing as an emotion-focused coping method, and perceived organizational sanctions as a moderator between work stressors and cyberloafing.

According to role theory (Kahn et al., 1964; Katz and Kahn, 1966, 1978), organizations can be viewed as a system of roles that relies on the appropriate assignment of job tasks to roles and employees' motivation to fulfill their assigned role. Employees are socialized into their designated role, given feedback on their success in carrying out their role, encouraged to make any necessary corrective adjustments to their performance, and sanctioned for failing to perform according to role expectations. Ideally, each role consists of a single recurrent activity. However, roles are often complicated by requiring employees to balance multiple, conflicting, or unclear roles (Katz and Kahn, 1978). These complications, or role stressors, induce tension, negatively affect work-related attitudes (Schaubroeck et al., 1993), and hurt organizational effectiveness.

Kahn et al. (1964) outlined the types of role stressors that can interfere with employees' successful implementation of their roles. First, role ambiguity is defined as uncertainty regarding job duties and expectations, lack of guidelines for appropriate work behaviors, and unpredictability of behavioral outcomes (Rizzo et al., 1970). Next, role conflict refers to incompatible demands in the workplace and can include conflicts between work demands and one's personal values, different supervisors' or workgroups' requests, and organizational policies and work duties (Rizzo et al., 1970). Finally, role overload is the extent that employees are required to do more work than can reasonably be expected in a given time period (Caplan, 1971).

Role ambiguity and role conflict have been extensively researched over the past forty years and identified as prevalent stressors across a variety of organizations as well as occupations. Meta-analytic evidence indicates that these stressors are detrimental to employee well-being, satisfaction at work, and job performance (Fisher and Gitelson, 1983; Jackson and Schuler, 1985; Tubre and Collins, 2000). Likewise, role overload has been linked to negative outcomes such as occupational injuries (Barling et al., 2002), turnover (Isaksson and Johannson, 2003), and other forms of strain including job tension, job dissatisfaction and anxiety (Perrewe et al., 2005). Thus, role theory and previous research indicate that these stressors should elicit the need for employees to activate coping mechanisms in order to avoid potential strains.

Coping refers to cognitive and behavioral attempts to manage stressors that are appraised as threatening to individual well-being (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). There are two categories of coping methods: problem-focused and emotion-focused. Problem-focused methods target altering or managing stressors perceived as demanding and include things like gathering information, generating solutions, forming a plan of action, drawing on past experience, or increasing effort. Conversely, emotion-focused coping attempts to deal with or reduce distressful emotions associated with demanding stressors (e.g., ignoring problems, hoping for a miracle, praying, sleeping, distancing oneself from the stressors). Cyberloafing can be characterized as an emotion-focused coping method and, specifically, an escape-avoidance coping strategy. Escape-avoidance methods emphasize avoiding or escaping from stressors through behavioral techniques such as sleeping, eating, drinking, smoking, or using controlled substances (Folkman et al., 1986). Cyberloafing is another behavior that enables employees to temporarily escape from work stressors and, thus, reduce distressful emotions associated with them.

However, we believe that cyberloafing will not be used to cope with all types of stressors. Specifically, it should be a coping mechanism for role ambiguity and role conflict, but not role overload. Both role ambiguity and conflict generate uncertainty as to what is expected from employees (Rizzo et al., 1970). With the former, there is a lack of guidelines as to what constitutes appropriate behavior at work, thus opening the door for cyberloafing as a type of coping mechanism. Likewise, role conflict creates uncertainty through the many conflicting demands and expectations imposed on employees, which can signal that there are exceptions to the rules. This again facilitates the use of cyberloafing in response to these work stressors as employees may not see it as explicitly forbidden given the uncertainty resulting from these stressors. Previous research provides some support for employee use of cyberloafing to manage role ambiguity and role conflict. For example, a survey by Lim et al. (2002) found that 37% of participants believed that it is appropriate to cyberloaf if they are subjected to conflicting demands at work (high role conflict). Further, the majority of respondents (52%) admitted they would feel guilty for cyberloafing if their job duties were clearly defined (low role ambiguity).

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