Workplace cyberdeviance: an emerging psychosocial risk

Despite its benefits, workplace digitalization has brought about an emerging psychosocial risk: cyber-deviant behaviors. Through three complementary studies, this dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive and multi-level understanding of workplace cyber-deviant behaviors, considering the perspectives of targets, perpetrators, and bystanders. The first study, a systematic literature review, provides a taxonomy of the main cyberdeviant behaviors investigated in organizational research and maps their nomological network through a multi-foci perspective. The findings reveal the need for integrated and clearer conceptual boundaries between enacted and experienced forms of deviance. The second study, adopting a policy mapping approach, aims to understand how workplace aggression is addressed within the Italian regulatory framework and its alignment with the academic literature. Findings evidence a lack of a clear regulatory framework and statutory policies in Italy about workplace aggression and its different forms. Several recommendations have been provided based on these findings and through a multi-level and multi-foci approach. Finally, the third study employs a longitudinal quantitative design to explore how workplace stressors, particularly job insecurity, are associated with enacted cyber-deviant behaviors, such as cyberloafing. Results show that job insecurity indirectly increases cyberloafing through decreased affective job satisfaction, underscoring the role of affective processes in shaping deviant digital conduct. Overall, the present dissertation provides a comprehensive understanding of cyberdeviant behaviors through theoretical, policy, and empirical understanding.