Managing Cyber-slacking: A Coercive Approach

Emilio M. Lamas

Modern times came side to side with innovation and technological advances, which

provided tools that facilitate our daily chores including business activities. Companies all

over the world transformed their way of working and took advantage of technology in order

to enhance productivity, embedding revolutionary internet on almost every one of its internal

processes, but failed to predict a costly side effect named cyber-slacking.

Organizational scholars have performed several studies worldwide that suggest a high

prevalence of employees engaging in personal activities, being the internet their favorite time

waster. Lim (2002) have described this self-conscious act of utilization of the companys

internet access for activities not considered work-related during office hours as cyber-

slacking. Regardless of the hours wasted and its effects on productivity, the preponderance

of this phenomenon has become a major concern to organizations, and the objective of this

essay is to discuss the ways to manage it.

Olivares and Zoghbi (2010) state that Cyber-slacking can be deterred by coercive

strategies such as physical leadership proximity, monitoring, and by punishment. When it

comes to leadership proximity, it will not have the desired effect on reduction of cyber-

slacking if the employee does not interpret it as a monitoring strategy, hence proximity is

effective only if they are aware of the supervisors negative attitude about wasting time.

Monitoring is another powerful mechanism to diminish cyber-slacking prevalence

among employees. The study carried out by Olivares and Zoghbi (2010) recommend that a

proper arrangement of the office must be implemented in order to allow superiors to have

easy access to workers screens and desks for monitoring purposes. In addition to this,

Canaan, Karkoulian, and McCarthy (2011) stated that prohibiting internet for personal use

on the job decreases cyber-slacking (p. 264).

 2

Punishment must be conducted as part of the strategy to address cyber-slacking

problems. This reinforces the messages that both proximity and monitoring are delivering to

employees that are not behaving as expected by their supervisors. Olivares and Zoghbi

(2010) concluded that:

Supervisors should check, and employees should perceive, that access control

measures are in place and security mechanisms are operating. Finally, as the key point

from our findings, information about penalties must be disseminated. However, rather

than sanctioning them to mend their ways (behavioral change), these penalties should

seek primarily to intimidate employees (p. 1048).

It is important to remark that punishment should be utilized as a coercive measure. In

fact, some companies have adopted this approach as sanctioning strategy. According to

Johnson and Rawlins (2008), publicly posting a list of the top non-work-related websites

browsed by employees, not including names, is far more effective than warning staff that

internet habits during work shifts are under surveillance. By doing this, they had even better

results than intimidating cyber-slackers about losing their jobs.

As a conclusion, the deterring strategies listed above have been studied by different

authors, and have been proven to be effective. Nevertheless, researchers have also found that

it is impossible to fully eliminate cyberloafing1 activities (Alvani, Jandaghi, Kozehanan, &

Matin, 2015, p. 345). Furthermore, Canaan et al. (2011) suggest that companies should

provide some access to cyber-slacking, but that opportunities must be limited to those sites

that are safe for the organization (p. 265), since the study they conducted conclude that this

activity can also have a positive impact on employee satisfaction (p. 264).

1
Cyber-slacking is referred as cyber-loafing by several authors and scholars. Both terms refer
to the same activity.

From the authors perspective, proximity, monitoring, and punishment have a direct

impact on reducing cyber-slacking preponderance within organizations but all three must be

implemented simultaneously while taking into consideration that a trade-off exists between

cyber-slacking and work satisfaction (Canaan et al., 2011, p. 264). Since the latter will be

influenced by the discussed strategies, there should be a plan on establishing a constructive

and positive culture (Alvani et al., 2015, p. 347) on companies, seeking to counteract the

negative impact of managing cyber-slacking coercively.

References

Alvani, S.M., Jandaghi, G., Kozehanan, S.F., & Matin, H.Z. (2015). Cyberloafing management in

organizations. Iranian Journal of Management Studies, 8(3), 335-349. doi:

10.22059/IJMS.2015.52634

Canaan, L., Karkoulian, S., & McCarthy, R. (2011). To restrict or not to restrict personal internet

usage on the job. Education, Business, and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues,

4(4), 253-266. doi: 10.1108/17537981111190042

Johnson, P.R., & Rawlins, C. (2008). Employee internet management: getting people back to work.

Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, 12(1), 43-48.

Lim, V.K.G. (2002). The IT way of loafing on the job: cyberloafing, neutralizing and organizational

justice. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23(5), 675-694. doi: 10.1002/job.161

Olivares, A., & Zoghbi, P. (2010). Bringing cyber loafers back on the right track. Industrial

Management & Data Systems, 110(7), 1038-1053. doi: 10.1108/02635571011069095