Decision-making Processes and Cooperation in a Cyberloafing Social Dilemmas (WITHDRAWN)

Abstract

A burgeoning problem facing organizations is the loss of workgroup productivity to the social dilemma of cyberloafing: a form of workplace production deviance where employees use their company’s Internet access for personal purposes during work hours. One approach to increasing cooperation in workplace social dilemmas is to change the decision-making rights about what workgroup members can do on the job. Bringing the normative decision-making model into the conversation about social dilemmas, we address the question: What effects does the decision-making structure have on workers facing the temptation to cyberloaf in workgroups? The normative decision-making model presents two extreme forms for how decisions are made in workgroups: autocratic and group decision-making processes. Using a laboratory experiment to simulate a data-entry organization, we find that autocratic and group decision-making structures both curtail cyberloafing, but only group decision-making boosts the cyberloafer’s subsequent work p...