Investigating the role of abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion on employees' cyber-loafing

Introduction: Cyber-loafing, which refers to the use of the Internet for personal use at work is a serious challenge for organizations due to the disruption in achieving organizational goals. In recent months, with the COVID-19 conditions and the fluctuations of various economic markets in Iran, cyber-loafing is highly common among the employees of Iranian organizations. On the other hand, using Internet resources has become necessary for all organizations to do part of their business processes. Effective use of Internet resources can lead to various positive results, such as reduced operating costs, effective communication between employees, and better job performance (Anandarajan et al., 2004). Ideally, the Internet is expected to be a tool to facilitate the job performance of employees. However, the Internet can also be used as an inappropriate tool that leads to reduced performance (Moody & Siponen, 2013). According to Kwai and Su (2017), employees spend about 20-24% of their working time on the Internet (Koay & Soh, 2017). This organizational behavior has led to a i30-40% reduction in employee productivity and costs organizations $750 annually (Ugrin et al., 2018). Therefore, dealing with deviant behaviors in organizations is of considerable importance.
Many researchers have addressed the causes and roots of cyber-loafing and paid attention to the antecedents of this behavior. A review of the background of cyber-loafing shows that most of the research in this field has mainly focused on organizational attitudes, behaviors and policies (Liberman et al., 2011; Pindek et al., 2018; Soral et al., 2020). But there is a theoretical gap to examine the mechanisms of supervision and especially abusive supervision in cyber-loafing (Lim et al., 2020).
Abusive supervision is a type of destructive leadership that has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners in recent years. According to Tepper et al. (2011), more than 13% of the workforce suffers abusive, insulting, or hostile behavior from their supervisors annually  (Lee et al., 2018). In addition, when employees in the organization spend online activities unrelated to their jobs or duties, it may be beneficial for them, but it is harmful to their organizations because avoiding the Internet is considered as an undesirable behavior and is in conflict with organizational productivity. Thus, while the hours spent on the Internet should be used to advance work responsibilities in line with organizational goals, it is spent on personal activities to compensate for emotional exhaustion caused by improper supervision (Koay & Soh,2017). In this research, we seek to investigate the effect of abusive supervision on cyber-loafing with the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion can be explained as the mental exhaustion and fatigue caused by the pressure of one's private life or job demands or a combination of both. It gives signals of the beginning of physical or mental collapse (Lim et al., 2020).
In summary, considering that the research on the mechanisms governing abusive supervision and organizational cyber-loafing has not been much developed, the present study aims to investigate the issue from the theoretical point of view of the social exchange theory (SET) and the conservation of resources (COR) theory. Also, the effect of abusive supervision on cyber-loafing is studied through the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the context of oil companies.
Methodology: The main paradigm of this research is descriptive and positivistic, and its statistical population included the administrative staff members of a company active in the oil industry. In terms of orientation, this study is an applied one with a comparative approach. The structural equation modeling method and the SmartPLS software were used to analyze the data.
Results and discussion: The findings of this research showed that emotional exhaustion plays a mediating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and cyber-loafing. That is, abusive supervision causes emotional exhaustion in employees and leads to their cyber-loafing.
Conclusion: The results indicate that abusive supervision has a positive effect on cyber-loafing, and the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion on the relationship between abusive supervision and cyber-loafing is moderated by commitment. Therefore, the employees who are mistreated in the organization suffer emotional exhaustion, pay less attention to their work, and spend more time in the cyberspace and the Internet. Also, the results show that employees who have higher commitment are less likely to experience mismanagement-induced emotional exhaustion and show less avoidance.