Department of Management & Organisation

A short report from Gao Xiangyu on his Research Findings presented in the conference.

In recent years, abuse of company’s internet resources by employees has received considerable amount of attention among organisational scholars. The term cyberslacking or cyberloafing has been used to describe voluntary acts of employees using their companies’ Internet access for non-work related purposes during working hours. While the cost and productivity loss associated with cyberloafing activities provide causes for concern for companies, some scholars also noted that cyberloafing serve as a palliative coping strategy against negative workplace experiences.

In a recent paper presented at the 14th Annual Asia Pacific Region Decision Science Conference, we presented a paper that examined the impact of cyberloafing on employees’ emotion and work. Specifically, we found that men were more likely to cyberloaf and report that cyberloafing has a positive impact on work than women. Further, men found it easy to switch between work and cyberloafing while women experienced difficulties in task switching. Our findings also suggested that browsing activities have a positive impact on employees’ emotion while emailing activities have a negative impact. Sample for this study was drawn from 190 working professionals in Singapore.