Bringing cyber loafers back on the right track

Purpose – Despite the use in companies of policy and control mechanisms to tackle cyberloafing, these practices are still popular among employees. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that control systems alone are unable to deter cyberloafing because they are eventually perceived as a sort of “ineffectual dog that may bark a lot, but ultimately does not bite.” Instead, control systems are only expected to deter cyberloafing if employees view them as leading to punitive consequences.Design/methodology/approach – First, given the easy visibility of cyberloafing activities, the paper proposes a design for control systems that not only includes perceptions of organizational control (monitoring), but also perceptions of the supervisor's physical proximity (proximity). Data are collected from university administration and services personnel, whose main working tool is the computer. They all have internet access and individual e‐mail, a stable physical location at work, and a supervisor. Multiple hierarchica...

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