Cyberslacking in the Workplace: Antecedents and Effects on Job Performance

Abstract

Employees’ nonwork use of information technology (IT), or cyberslacking, is of growing concern due to its erosion of job performance and other negative organizational consequences. Research on cyberslacking antecedents has drawn on diverse theoretical perspectives, resulting in a lack of cohesive explanation of cyberslacking. Further, prior studies generally overlooked IT-specific variables. To address the cyberslacking problems in organizations and research gaps in the literature, we used a combination of a literature-based approach and a qualitative inquiry to develop a model of cyberslacking that includes a 2x2 typology of antecedents. The proposed model was tested and supported in a three-wave field study of 395 employees in a Fortune-100 US organization. For research, this work organizes antecedents from diverse research streams and validates their relative impact on cyberslacking, thus providing a cohesive theoretical explanation of cyberslacking. This work also incorporates contextualization (i.e., IT-specific factors) into theory development and enriches IS literature by examining the nonwork aspects of IT use and their negative consequences to organizations. For practice, the results provide practitioners with insights into nonwork use of IT in organizations, particularly on how they can take organizational action to mitigate cyberslacking and maintain employee productivity.