Exploring cyberloafing behavior in South-central Ethiopia: A close look at Madda Walabu University

Abstract

The Internet has made a significant impact on work and the personal lives of people working around the world. While access to the Internet has changed the ways work can be carried out, it has also increased the opportunities for people to cyberloaf, while under the guise of doing work. Cyberloafing is employees' non-work related use of internet while working hours in any organization. Of late, it is a burning issue owing to its concern with employees' work culture, productivity, safety and security. This study explores cyberloafing in Madda Walabu University, situated in South-central Ethiopia aiming at employees' attitudes, opportunities and addictions to cyberloafing; and how far it has brought change in their lives. The objectives of this research are: to determine the attitude towards cyberloafing; to identify the opportunities through cyberloafing; to underline developments through cyberloafing; and to specify the addiction of cyberloafing. The participants of this research are those females who are working as secretaries of 11 different departments of Madda Walabu University having internet connection on their office computer. The study is qualitative with interview (n=20) as a tool and snowball sampling as a sampling technique. The data is transcribed, sorted, edited, coded and analyzed manually; and the results and discussion is presented through underlining themes. Findings suggest that most of the cyberloafers showed positive attitude, acknowledged opportunities; confirmed development and addiction into their lives due to cyber engagements. Further research is needed to investigate the other stakeholders like students, teachers, managers and other stakeholders in order to obtain the holistic picture of cyberloafing behavior in the Ethiopian universities.

“I am What I ought to Be”: Women Cyberslacking in Ethiopian Public University

“…The town has four kebeles with a population of more than 500 000. It is a hub of different social, economic, government, and non-government institutions (Hussain & Parida, 2017). Founded in 2006, MWU is one of Ethiopia's fastest-growing public higher education institutions regarding student registration, program expansion, and campuses.…”

“…There are three antecedents that influence cyberslacking at the individual, organizational, and situational levels (Jandaghi et al, 2015;Simsek & Simsek, 2019). At the individual level, the most important factors that influence cyberslacking are the perception of the cyberslacker, the cognitive and behavioral pattern of the cyberslacker, habits or addictions of the cyberslacker, and the demographic category of the cyberslacker like gender, age, education, background, and income (Hussain & Parida, 2017;Mamat & Batuqyan, 2019). Moreover, there are many factors affecting cyberslacking at the organizational level, for example, nature of job, job satisfaction, commitment towards work, restriction policy, expected outcome of the internet use, perception of the manager towards cyberslacking, coworkers' cyberslacking behavior, justice to the employee, and attitude towards workplace (Sheikh et al, 2015;Sze et al, 2019).…”

“…The internet use policy of an organization encompasses internet use guidelines, code of ethics, deterrence mechanisms, and possible consequences. The monitoring strategy of an organization involves proximity, punishment, internet service provider monitoring, KeyStore logging, e-mail monitoring, screen monitoring, and software monitoring (Arshad et al, 2016;Hussain & Parida, 2017;Kasap, 2019).…”

“…In the interview, six out of eight secretaries confessed that they either feel lockdown or become blank if they cannot cyberslack for a long interval. According to one secretary respondent: In a similar qualitative study, Hussain and Parida (2017) reported that about half of the respondents got bored at the workplace without cyberslacking. About a quarter of them managed their working hours without cyberslacking by doing some specifically designed offline works.…”

Cyberloafing: Minimalizing Work Stress on Millennial Generations Employee

“…Causes of work stress can be in the form of lack of time in completing the given task, no facilities that support work, and conflicting tasks. One of the behaviors that are considered negative in using the internet at work is the tendency to access sites that are not relevant to work responsibilities, which results in cyberloafing (Blau et al, 2006;Hussain & Parida, 2017). Cyberloafing not only has a negative impact but can also have a positive impact.…”