A Panacea to Prevent Digital Distraction in Workplace: How and When Corporate Social Responsibility Prevent Employees From Cyberloafing

ABSTRACT Despite the prevalence of employees' cyberloafing in workplaces, knowledge on how to avoid such behavior has been largely discounted. Integrating sensemaking theory with self‐construal theory, this study aims to explore how and when corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects employees' cyberloafing. Through an experimental study ( N = 152) and a multi‐wave field study ( N = 240) with samples of full‐time employees, we find that (1) CSR positively predicts employees' work meaningfulness; (2) work meaningfulness mediates the relationship between CSR and employees' cyberloafing; (3) interdependent self‐construal strengthens the positive effect of CSR on work meaningfulness; and (4) interdependent self‐construal influences the indirect effects of CSR on employees' cyberloafing through work meaningfulness. Our research contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the previously underexplored preventive effect of CSR on cyberloafing, thereby broadening the business ethics discourse around ethics‐oriented “soft” CSR policies as a means to mitigate employee cyberloafing in the digital era. Furthermore, drawing on sensemaking theory, we identify work meaningfulness as a mediator between CSR and cyberloafing, responding to calls for considering broader processes of CSR sensemaking to understand the relationship between CSR and employee outcomes. Finally, we extend self‐construal theory by integrating it with sensemaking theory to identify two types of self‐construal (i.e., interdependent and independent) as the boundary conditions under which CSR is more or less effective in reducing employee cyberloafing.