The influence of interpersonal relationships to cyberloafing during remote work

Cyberloafing, personal internet access during work hours, is a common form of productive deviance in modern workplaces. With the growth of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), workers could easily access the internet on a PC or personal cell phone. In the case of remote work, cyberloafing is more controversial due to the freedom of access to private internet usage. Regardless of the merits of remote work for both organizations and employees, the concern with the productive loss hinders the prevalence of remote work. Here, we investigated the occurrence of cyberloafing when working remotely for 760 Japanese working adults through an online survey and explored the influence of three aspects of interpersonal relationships (home-based psychological resources, group attractiveness, and collective performance factor) to cyberloafing during remote work with primary cyberloafing antecedents. We hypothesized that positive interpersonal relationships decrease cyberloafing during remote work and supervisor support related to more cyberloafing because of social-loafing-related motivational loss. The results showed that employees’ perceptions of their supervisors’ cyberloafing served as a significant antecedent of their own cyberloafing, both in remote and in-office work. However, the presence of formal internet-use rules did not effectively deter such behavior. In addition, positive attitudes toward coworkers were associated with less cyberloafing, while family better life satisfaction was associated with less cyberloafing. Interestingly, supervisor support was linked to greater cyberloafing. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of interpersonal factors both at work and at home—for promoting effective and responsible behavior in remote work environments. • Perceived supervisor’s cyberloafing works as the antecedent of cyberloafing in remote as well as office work • Supervisor support is related to more cyberloafing. • Family support is related to less cyberloafing in remote work. • Rules for internet use do not deter cyberloafing.