the effect of techno-stress on cyberslacking

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The diverse and growing body of literature argues that despite the undesirable influences of cyberslacking on employees and organisations, these behaviours are not totally disruptive, because cyberslacking may encourage employees to develop the skills and knowledge needed from the internet to climb the career ladder (Anandarajan and Simmers 2004). It may also reduce employee stress, fatigue, and boredom (Reinecke 2009, 461). Therefore, if controlled systematically, organisations may even benefit from cyberslacking. Although cyberslacking is considered as a tool to cope with technostress, the annual cost to productivity is estimated to be in the billions. Not only does cyberslacking have a direct impact on employees and organisations, but may also engender indirect problems. For example, personal internet use in working hours results in incomplete work and to be able to finish the task in time, employees connect to their jobs in off-hours, at any time of the day or night (Towers et al. 2006). When employees engage in work activities after working hours, the boundary between business and private life becomes blurred (Golden and Geisler 2007) and the result is techno-stress. This stress, in turn, sets the stage for employees to legitimise cyberslacking. It is, therefore, possible to expect that if employees perform work-related activities or even feel stress due to workrelated technology in their out-of-office hours, they may undertake non-work-related activities while at work. Thus a vicious cycle is created between technostress and cyberslacking, as techno-stress prepares the ground for cyberslacking, and in turn, cyberslacking activities result in an obligation to work after working hours, which is a form of techno-stress. In this context, König and De La Guardia (2014) evaluated personal internet use at work as a result of the intertwinement of work and non-work. However, a cause-and-effect relationship between techno-stress and cyberslacking could not be identified in this study since the research design was a cross-sectional one, which refers that data was collected from each participant at one point in time (Van der Stede 2014).

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