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PurposeThe purpose of this research is to examine work alienation (WA) as a mediator in the relationship between employees' perceptions of person‐organization (PO) fit – operationalized as value congruence – and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) directed at their organization (OCBO), co‐workers (OCBIC), and students or clients (OCBIS).Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 99 of the 156 (63.5 percent) teachers at a district high school in Spain. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the predicted relationships.FindingsResults support that PO fit is an antecedent of OCBO, OCBIC, and OCBIS and also, in general, that the three dimensions of WA (powerlessness, meaninglessness, and self‐estrangement) mediate this link. Separately, all WA dimensions are totally or partially supported as “full mediators,” except for powerlessness and meaninglessness that appear to act on OCBIS as “partial mediators.” The model tested suggests PO fit predicts OCB and that this relationship can be explained by the mediating role of WA.Research limitations/implicationsSubjects in this study reflect job conditions peculiar to the public sector. This may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings to the private sector. Also, results may not generalize to other cultural or national contexts. The findings contribute to an improved understanding of the influence of PO value fit/misfit on OCB.Practical implicationsUnderstanding how PO fit is able to affect citizenship behavior suggests that actions designed to promote PO fit may be useful for more efficiently managing employee WA, and, therefore, more powerfully eliciting OCB in the workplace.Originality/valueEmployee work alienation is demonstrated to be a mediator in the relationship between PO fit and OCB. This is the first empirical test of this relationship.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the appearance of cyberloafing at work, that is, the use of the company’s internet connection for personal purposes, may be due to a workplace that lacks mindfulness and compassion. The authors first hypothesize that supervisors’ mindfulness is related to the mindfulness of their direct followers, and that both are related to employees’ compassion at work. The authors also hypothesize that compassion mediates the link between supervisors’ and followers’ mindfulness and cyberloafing, and that empathic concern mediates the link from compassion to cyberloafing. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was distributed to followers working in groups of three with the same leader in all of the 100 banks in London (UK). Supervisors and their direct reports (n=100) and 100 triads of followers (n=300) participated. The authors applied structural equation modeling (SEM) for analyses. Findings Results showed that supervisors’ and followers’ mindfulness were significantly related to each other and to compassion at work, but compassion acted as a mediator only in the case of supervisors’ mindfulness. Empathic concern mediated the compassion-cyberloafing link. Research limitations/implications The study could suffer from mono-method/source bias and specificities of banks and their work processes can raise concerns about the generalizability of the results. Practical implications Findings suggest that mindfulness training may facilitate compassion at work, which, in turn, will restrain the occurrence of cyberloafing at work. Originality/value This is the first study to analyze how and why employees refrain from harming their organizations out of compassion.

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Anomia describes the individual's lack of integration in social life. This study examines the moderating role of work anomia (WA) in the relationship between employees' perceptions of organizational justice (OJ) and workplace Internet misuse (or cyberloafing). The model suggests that WA interacts with that link by tightening their theoretic negative association. Data were collected from 270 (17.46%) of the 1,547 teachers of a Spanish university by Internet e-mail. Multiple hierarchical regression results support that WA acts as a moderator of the OJ-cyberloafing link because the perceptions of three types of OJ (distributive, procedural, and interactional) among employees with low, as compared to high anomia, have a stronger negative relationship with cyberloafing. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the OJ-cyberloafing link, and favor the control of cyberloafing through WA.