Investigating cyberloafing, organisational justice, work engagement and organisational trust of South African retail and manufacturing employees

Abstract

Cyberloafing is seen as the prevailing manner, in which employees use the organisations’ internet access to engage in non-work-related activities, which reduce productivity and have other negative consequences. Limited research exists on the relationships between cyberloafing organisational justice, work engagement and organisational trust within the South African context. The main objective of this study was to investigate how cyberloafing, organisational justice, work engagement and organisational trust are related to one another among South African office workers in the retail and manufacturing industry. A quantitative cross-sectional research approach was utilized within this study. Furthermore, the measuring instruments were administrated to a convenience sample (N=224) from the manufacturing and retail industries. The results indicated that organisational justice was positively related to organisational trust and organisational trust was positively related to work engagement. Additionally, work engagement had shown to have a negative relationship to cyberloafing. Organisational trust was further revealed to be a mediator between organisational justice and work engagement. Further to this it was established that work engagement played a mediating role in the relationship between organisational trust and cyberloafing. It is therefore suggested that organisations focus on increasing perceived organisational justice and organisational trust. Additionally, this study provided recommendations for practical and future research to assist organisations and researchers