Whether satisfaction with and liking for the supervisor moderate the relationship between fair treatment and employee internet behaviour

Abstract

The current study aims to elaborate on the link between perceptions of interactional justice (IJ) – a specific type of organisational justice that reflects how an employee is treated by an authority figure – and internet behaviour. We first discuss what is unique about internet behaviour by focusing on two cyber activity categories, cyberloafing and cybercivism, performed by university instructors. Drawing on prior research suggesting that judgments about the supervisor may create schemas that can determine subsequent responses, we predict stronger influences of IJ on internet behaviour in those employees who display higher rather than lower liking for their supervisor and satisfaction with supervisor performance. Furthermore, just as prior research found for conventional deviance and citizenship, the paper hypothesises that cyberloafing and cybercivism are negatively inter-correlated. The results do not support main effects of IJ on these internet behaviours, while employees with comparatively high satisfaction with their supervisor’s performance responded to IJ with less cyberloafing and more cybercivism. Contrary to expectations, the predicted inter-correlation was not supported and employees with relatively high liking for the supervisor responded to IJ by displaying more cyberloafing and the same cybercivism. Finally, the threeway interaction terms decreased cyberloafing but failed to increase cybercivism. Implications for research and practice are discussed.