Sparking leadership and perceived organizational support as predictors of cyberloafing

Abstract

Alongside numerous benefits in business life (such as additional business opportunities, increased labour productivity), the Internet is responsible for adverse effects like cyberloafing in the workplace. Accessing the Internet for personal purposes during work hours is a prominent reason for counterproductive employee behaviour. The current theoretical background, however, is not sufficient to explain the causes of such behaviour. The article aims to identify the role of such factors as sparking leadership and perceived organizational support in preventing employees’ willingness to use their work time to engage in nonwork-related internet activities. To do so, five dimensions of cyberloafing are discussed: sharing, shopping, real-time updating, accessing online content, and gaming/gambling. Leadership theories, social exchange theory, and organizational support theory constitute the methodological basis of the research. The methods used are confirmatory factor analysis, and the PLS-SEM technique to reach a path model revealing the direct, indirect, and total relationships between the given dimensions. The data were collected from March to September 2023 through a face-to-face survey with 95 respondents from over 40 SMEs operating in Türkiye. The results revealed that perceived organizational support mediates the relationship between sparking leadership and sharing, shopping, and real-time updating dimensions of cyberloafing. The results point to the need for reconsidering organizational practices, values, and policies in a way that would foster employees’ well-being and happiness within the organization and mitigate their cyberloafing behaviour.