Abusive supervision and cyberloafing: an investigation based on Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory

Abstract

PurposeCyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.Design/methodology/approachUsing a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.FindingsBased on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.Originality/valueThis work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.

The U-shaped effect of responsible leadership on employees’ cyberloafing

“…Firstly, this study expands the related research (Andel et al, 2021;Batabyal & Bhal, 2020;Bhattacharjee & Sarkar, 2023;Chavan et al, 2021;Elciyar & Simsek, 2021;Hu et al, 2021;Peng et al, 2023) on the influencing factors of cyberloafing behaviour. Previous studies on antecedents of cyberloafing behaviour mainly focus on individual characteristics (Lim & Teo, 2005) and organisational circumstances (Lim, 2002;; limited studies concentrate on the impact of leadership on cyberloafing behaviour (Bhattacharjee & Sarkar, 2023;Lim et al, 2021;Peng et al, 2023;Zhang et al, 2022;Zoghbi Manrique de Lara & Viera-Armas, 2017). These studies found that authoritarian leadership and abusive supervision positively affect employees' cyberloafing, and ethical leadership and participative leadership negatively affect employees' cyberloafing.…”

“…Cyberloafing behaviour Lim (2002) developed the 11-item scale of cyberloafing and the mature scale has been validated by scholars (e.g. Bhattacharjee & Sarkar, 2023;Kim et al, 2016). We measured cyberloafing using Lim (2002)'s scale on a five-point Likert type scale (1 = never to 5 = always).…”

“…These studies found that authoritarian leadership and abusive supervision positively affect employees' cyberloafing, and ethical leadership and participative leadership negatively affect employees' cyberloafing. These studies mainly tested the linear effect of leadership on cyberloafing (Bhattacharjee & Sarkar, 2023;Lim et al, 2021;Peng et al, 2023;Zhang et al, 2022;Zoghbi Manrique de Lara & Viera-Armas, 2017), but the U-shaped relationship between them has not been paid attention. Noticing this fact, our study complements this research by examining the U-shaped influence of responsible leadership on cyberloafing behaviour, thus further enriching the research on antecedents of cyberloafing behaviour.…”

Unintended influence of leader forgiveness: increased employee cyberloafing

“…In this regard, previous work has focused on two approaches: (a) how negative leader behaviors increase employee cyberloafing (e.g. abusive supervision) (Agarwal and Avey, 2020; Bhattacharjee and Sarkar, n.d; Koay et al ., 2022; Lim et al ., 2021) and (b) how positive leader behaviors inhibit employee cyberloafing (e.g. ethical leadership and leader mindfulness) (Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara and Viera-Armas, 2017; Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara et al ., 2020).…”