Developing Human Capital through Personal Web Use in the Workplace: Mapping Employee Perceptions

Abstract

Personal web usage can be defined as any voluntary act of employees using their company's web access during office hours to surf non-work related websites for non-work purposes. Previous research suggested that personal web usage is a negative force with productivity losses, congested computer resources, security costs, and the potential risk of legal liability. However, using qualitative research we investigated the attitudes of a diverse set of individuals to personal web usage. Our findings suggest that personal web usage in the workplace can be potentially constructive, although we acknowledge the potential for negative uses as well. We suggest an extension of social contract theory to explain these findings.

When Do Employees Cyberloaf? An Interactionist Perspective Examining Personality, Justice, and Empowerment

“…Although cyberloafing is viewed as a counterproductive work behavior, under some circumstances, it could play a constructive role (Lim & Chen, ). For example, cyberloafing might effectively relieve stress and anxiety, while preventing burnout for employees at the workplace, thereby increasing work productivity (Anandarajan & Simmers, ; Maslach & Leiter, ; Oravec, ; Stanton, ). Also, a certain amount of cyberloafing is inevitable and acceptable for giving employees a break and some rejuvenation.…”

Perceptions of Personal Web Usage in the Workplace: AQ-Methodology Approach

“…4 Such usage can result in positive impacts on web skills, internet usage, job satisfaction [5][6][7] increase in productivity and quality of work, 4,8 resilience, positive emotion and such other work-related positive outcomes. 9 The second research stream advocates that PWU can lead to decrease in productivity, 5,10-12 undesirable activities such as porno-surfing, 13 cyberloafing, 12 gambling and music downloads. 14 SurfControl Inc. 15 for instance reports that the cost of PWU at the work place can cost organizations billions of dollars in terms of lost productivity, increased security costs and network overload, as well as the risk of civil and criminal liability.…”

Cyberloafing: Effects on Employee Job Performance and Behavior

“…Thus in previous studies, the findings on Cyberloafing are contradictory in nature and have shown positive as well as negative consequences. Some studies have shown that this phenomenon can act as one of the coping strategies against adverse experiences at work (Oravec, 2002), (Stanton, 2002), (Anandarajan & Simmers, 2005). This is vital as employees have to extend their working hours and may have to go through the negative impact of burnout and stress (Maslach & Leiter, 1997).…”

“…The employees had a feeling that basic form of cyberloafing during working hours generally is tolerable (Lim, V.K.G., Chen, & D.J.Q., 2009). Researchers, (Maslach & Leiter, 1997); (Oravec, 2002); (Anandarajan & Simmers, 2005) indicate possible outcomes of cyberloafing such as decreasing burnout, less stress, and anxiety level. In another research, five core values of job characteristics (task identity, task significance, skill variety, feedback and job autonomy) and three main types of role stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload) are the predictors of cyberloafing, but skill variety, job autonomy, role ambiguity, and role conflict are found to be significant predictors of cyberloafing (Madiha Arshad, December 2016).…”