With the advancement of the digital era, employees increasingly engage in non-work-related online activities during working hours, such as browsing social media, online shopping, and watching videos. These behaviors are commonly referred to as cyberlo...
With the advancement of the digital era, employees increasingly engage in non-work-related online activities during working hours, such as browsing social media, online shopping, and watching videos. These behaviors are commonly referred to as cyberloafing. While previous studies have mainly focused on the antecedents and individual consequences of cyberloafing, less attention has been paid to how employees’ perceptions of coworkers’ cyberloafing influence interpersonal and task-related processes within organizations.
Based on conflict theory and social exchange theory, this study examines the mechanism through which perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing affects social loafing. Specifically, this study investigates whether perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing increases relationship conflict and task conflict, and whether these two types of conflict mediate the relationship between perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing and social loafing. In addition, this study examines whether perceived organizational support weakens the effects of perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing on relationship conflict and task conflict.
Data were collected through an online survey of 445 employees in China. The data were analyzed using SPSS 29.0. Exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchical regression analysis, and bootstrapping analysis using PROCESS Macro were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.
The results showed that perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing had a significant positive effect on both relationship conflict and task conflict. This indicates that employees who perceive higher levels of coworkers’ cyberloafing are more likely to experience interpersonal tension and work-related disagreement. Relationship conflict and task conflict were also found to have significant positive effects on social loafing. In addition, the results confirmed that relationship conflict and task conflict each mediated the relationship between perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing and social loafing. These findings suggest that perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing can indirectly increase social loafing by intensifying both emotional and task-related conflict.
Furthermore, perceived organizational support was found to moderate the relationships between perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing and both types of conflict. Specifically, when perceived organizational support was high, the positive effects of perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing on relationship conflict and task conflict were weakened. This suggests that perceived organizational support can function as a buffering factor that reduces the negative spillover effects of perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing in the workplace.
Overall, this study extends cyberloafing research by shifting the focus from the actor’s own cyberloafing behavior to coworkers’ perceptions of such behavior. It also contributes to conflict theory and social exchange theory by showing how perceived coworkers’ cyberloafing can generate conflict and lead to social loafing. The findings provide practical implications for managing cyberloafing, workplace conflict, and employee effort reduction in digital work environments.