Diversity Scholarship and Impact on Performance: Research Synthesis and Future Directions for Theory Building

-- Roshni Das

While diversity has been generally accepted as a requisite or desirable feature in various group settings and activities, its relationship with outcomes such as performance excellence has been found to be at best tenuous. In fact, scholars have struggled to even define the construct comprehensively. Moreover, while empirical studies showing correlation-based causation abound, there is little in terms of integrated theoretical exposition. This paper explores, from the extant literature, the various conceptualizations of diversity, identifies moderating variables to establish its connection with performance and delineates the composition of performance outcomes, contingent upon the variations among the previous two categories of constructs. This exercise is meant to bring clarity with regard to the impact of diversity research and also has implications for theory building in this domain. Future research directions are also discussed.

© 2017 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Cyberloafing: The Di(sguised)gital Way of Loafing on the Job

-- Brinda Sampat and Pooja A Basu

Cyberloafing or cyberslacking is a term used when employees excessively surf the Internet during work hours for non-work related activities. With the indispensable use of the Internet at workplaces today, this has become an all-pervasive problem for contemporary organizations causing an alarming financial loss. Activities pertaining to cyberloafing include playing games online, online shopping, online gambling, and using social networking sites and adult websites, to name a few. Based on the available literature, this paper defines cyberloafing, the antecedents and consequences to cyberloafing and also the measures to curb it. The primary factors that lead to cyberloafing are lack of organizational justice, lack of job involvement, attitude towards the job, and job monotony, and personal factors such as stress, boredom and procrastination. The consequences of cyberloafing include not only better creativity, better job satisfaction and a better learning environment but also decline in productivity, loss of intellectual property, data thefts and loss in time. Measures to reduce cyberloafing comprise putting in place Internet monitoring systems, policies that restrict the access of certain sites, and use of firewalls whilst at work. Further areas of research should focus on psychological experiments and empirical analyses of end-user behavior to get deeper understanding about cyberloafing.

© 2017 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

The Influence of Employee Engagement on the Work-Life Balance of Employees in the IT Sector

-- Sarjue Pandita and Ritesh Singhal

Post industrialization and IT revolution, business world has become very volatile in terms of change. Change has become the order of the day. Every business function is affected by changes which has left its impressions in one way or the other, and therefore, it has become one of the most imperative and challenging jobs for HR to strategize and manage employees in the changing business paradigm. Apart from other challenges like work-life balance and managing turnover, the most important challenge nowadays is getting your employees through employee engagement. This study analyzes how employee engagement influences work-life balance and what are the factors that organizations might consider when they strategize employee engagement and work-life balance. This paper explores if there is any relationship between employee engagement and work-life balance.

© 2017 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

The Role of Work-Family Culture and Personality Traits in Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) of First-Level Managerial Personnel

-- A P Singh, Vinod Kumar Gupta, Anand Prakash Dubey, and Anoop Kumar Singh

The paper explores the role of work-family culture and personality traits in Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) among first-level managers. Data was collected from 117 managers of a public sector insurance agency. Results revealed that managerial support (dimension of work-family culture) was significantly positively correlated with courtesy and altruism (dimensions of OCB). Career consequences and organizational time demands (dimensions of work-family culture) were found to be significantly negatively correlated with civic virtue, courtesy, altruism (dimensions of OCB) and OCB (total), while career consequence was found to be significantly negatively correlated with conscientiousness but organizational time demand (dimension of work-family culture) was significantly positively correlated with conscientiousness (dimension of OCB). Conscientiousness (dimension of personality) was significantly positively correlated with OCB (total) and its various dimensions, while openness (dimension of personality) was significantly negatively correlated with conscientiousness, civic virtue and courtesy (dimensions of OCB). Results of simultaneous regression analysis confirmed that only conscientiousness was significantly positively associated with conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy, altruism (dimensions of OCB) and OCB. Career consequence was significantly negatively associated with conscientiousness and civic virtue, while organizational time demand was significantly negatively associated with OCB. The findings of this study will help in enhancing the OCB.

© 2017 IUP. All Rights Reserved.