Linking social undermining to cyberloafing: cross-sectional and cross-lagged panel investigations

Cyberloafing has emerged as a prevalent problem in modern organizations. Research on its antecedents, mediators, and outcomes is still underdeveloped. The purpose of this research was two-fold. To examine direct and indirect associations between supervisor undermining and cyberloafing via the sequential mediating roles of anger and work-related learning and to test reciprocal relationships between two distinct sources of social undermining (i.e. supervisors and coworkers) and cyberloafing over time. To achieve these objectives, we conducted two studies among a sample of employees in the software industry in Islamabad, Pakistan, from January to June 2024. Study 1 incorporated a cross-sectional design, and 596 employees participated in the paper-and-pencil survey. Analysis using structural equation modeling (SEM) in Amos showed that supervisor undermining is positively associated with cyberloafing. Moreover, the results of mediation analysis using the bootstrapping method indicated that supervisor undermining provokes anger among socially undermined employees that, in turn, hampers their work-related learning and, ultimately, leads them to engage in cyberloafing. Study 2 incorporated a cross-lagged panel design in which 547 employees who had participated in Study 1 completed the second paper-and-pencil survey, separated by a three-month time lag. The cross-lagged SEM panel analysis showed that two sources of social undermining and cyberloafing are reciprocally related. The current study is unique in revealing that anger and work-related learning individually and sequentially mediate the relationship between supervisor undermining and cyberloafing, and by demonstrating that when undermined employees use cyberloafing as a coping mechanism they may escalate social undermining perpetrated by supervisors and coworkers.