Paper ID
2506
Description
Internet monitoring has been widely adopted in organizations to regulate employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, which refers to employees’ usage of the Internet for non-work-related purposes during work time. However, there is no study in prior literature to investigate how cyberloafing-related Internet monitoring affects employee job performance. To address this research gap, this study conducted a field experiment to examine the impact of Internet monitoring on employee job performance. I found that Internet monitoring decreased employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, it also decreased employees’ intrinsic work motivation. I further found that cyberloafing was negatively related to the job performance of employees with high extrinsic work motivation, and intrinsic work motivation was positively related to employee job performance. In other words, the results suggest that Internet monitoring may improve employee job performance by reducing employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, but it can also harm employee job performance by decreasing employees’ intrinsic work motivation.
Recommended Citation
Jiang, Hemin, "Understanding the Impact of Cyberloafing-Related Internet Monitoring on Employee Job Performance: A Field Experiment" (2019). ICIS 2019 Proceedings. 21.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2019/governance_is/governance_is/21
Understanding the Impact of Cyberloafing-Related Internet Monitoring on Employee Job Performance: A Field Experiment
Internet monitoring has been widely adopted in organizations to regulate employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, which refers to employees’ usage of the Internet for non-work-related purposes during work time. However, there is no study in prior literature to investigate how cyberloafing-related Internet monitoring affects employee job performance. To address this research gap, this study conducted a field experiment to examine the impact of Internet monitoring on employee job performance. I found that Internet monitoring decreased employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, it also decreased employees’ intrinsic work motivation. I further found that cyberloafing was negatively related to the job performance of employees with high extrinsic work motivation, and intrinsic work motivation was positively related to employee job performance. In other words, the results suggest that Internet monitoring may improve employee job performance by reducing employees’ cyberloafing behaviour, but it can also harm employee job performance by decreasing employees’ intrinsic work motivation.