Abstract
PurposePrevious studies on cyberloafing focus on individual and organization factors, ignoring the situation of employes as the event observers. Drawing on affective events theory (AET), the present study proposed a theoretical model for the relationships among peer abusive supervision, negative affectivity, cyberloafing, and hostile attribute bias, which aims to bridge the above research gap.MethodologyMultiwave data of 355 employes from 8 service-oriented companies in Southwest China supported our model. Time-lag method and critical incident techniques were introduced during the data collection stage. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and bootstrapping method were employed for hypothesis test.FindingsThe empirical results indicated that peer abusive supervision was positively related to third party’s cyberloafing, and the third party’s negative affectivity plays a mediating role among the above relationships. In addition, the third party’s hostile attribution bias moderated the mediating role of third party’s negative affectivity. Specifically, the effect of peer abusive supervision on third party’s negative affectivity and the mediating effect of this negative affectivity were stronger when the third party’s hostile attribution bias was higher.OriginalityDrawing on AET, the current study constructed a process model of third party’s cyberloafing reactions to peer abusive supervision, which helps explain the affective mechanism and the boundary conditions of the above “events-affectivity-behavior” path. Our model is a positive response to previous scholars’ calls for research of abusive supervision from multiple perspectives. Meanwhile, the current study explored the antecedent variable of cyberloafing from the perspective of event observers, which provides a theoretical basis for follow-up-related research. Thirdly, this study further expanded the theoretical boundaries of AET.
Highlights
Cyberloafing refers to the counterproductive work behavior (CWB) in which employes check private emails and browse nonwork-related websites during working hours, thereby affecting their work progress (Lim, 2002; Askew et al, 2014)
We suggest that peer abusive supervision will pose threats and challenges to third-party employes that will result in their negative affectivity, which may make them get away from the supervisors for fleeing the negative affectivity
Our core variables involved in this article, peer abusive supervision, negative affectivity, cyberloafing, and hostile attribution bias are all evaluated by third-party employes, which may suffer the common method variance
Summary
Cyberloafing refers to the counterproductive work behavior (CWB) in which employes check private emails and browse nonwork-related websites during working hours, thereby affecting their work progress (Lim, 2002; Askew et al, 2014). During these years, with the continuous development of information technology, cyberloafing has widely existed on a global workplace and brought a negative impact to enterprises (Baturay and Toker, 2015; Usman et al, 2021). Using computers to work remotely at home allows employes to have more work autonomy, which makes them possible to engage in more cyberloafing (O’Neill et al, 2014a). It is necessary to clarify the driving factors of cyberloafing, and formulate regulations and training plans to reduce the frequency of cyberloafing within the organization
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