Start Task Crafting, Stay Away from Cyberloafing: The Moderating Role of Supervisor Developmental Feedback.

Abstract

Cyberloafing as a production deviance behavior raises organizational concerns. Unfortunately, it is unknown how to minimize cyberloafing from a bottom-up perspective, particularly different types of cyberloafing. This study draws on the job crafting and dual-process theory to construct a framework for understanding the relationship between task crafting and passive-active cyberloafing, as well as their boundary condition (i.e., supervisor developmental feedback). We adopted a convenient sampling method, following a two-stage sampling with a time interval of 2 weeks. A sample of 614 full-time employed adults were recruited from the online survey. The results showed that: (1) Task crafting was negatively related to passive and active cyberloafing, respectively. (2) The impact of task crafting on passive cyberloafing rather than active cyberloafing was moderated by supervisor developmental feedback, such that task crafting had significant negative relations with passive cyberloafing when supervisor developmental feedback was higher (vs. lower). Overall, our research findings indicate that passive cyberloafing seems more sensitive to the organizational environment than active cyberloafing, thus different types of cyberloafing have different intervention strategies.