How external monitoring can mitigate cyberloafing: understanding the mediating and moderating roles of employees’ self-control

Organisations widely adopt external monitoring to regulate employees’ cyberloafing, which refers to employees’ non-work-related internet usage during work time. Although prior studies have examined the effect of external monitoring on cyberloafing, the underlying mechanisms through which external monitoring affects cyberloafing remain unclear. Drawing on counteractive control theory and the literature on the relationship between external controls and self-control, we investigate how employees’ self-control can play an important role in understanding the effect of external monitoring on cyberloafing. Based on a survey of 227 employees, we find that external monitoring promotes employees’ self-control motivation, which in turn, decreases their cyberloafing. We further find that the above relationships were contingent upon employees’ dispositional self-control capacity. Our study makes contributions by advancing researchers’ understanding of how external monitoring affects employees’ cyberloafing. Our study also extends the counteractive control theory by introducing the concept of self-control motivation, which is a complementary dimension of self-control capacity. In addition, the findings have important implications for alleviating the potential side effect of external monitoring used in organisations.