Discussion: How has cyber technology created opportunities for workplace deviance?

Cyber technology creates many opportunities for threats within the organization.This makes it difficult to catch whoever the employee is since all these acts are done through computers. Cyberdeviance is defined as inappropriate or criminal behavior in a digital context(Oakly and Salam 2012). According to Venkatraman et al. , there are three aspects of this issue which are behaviors that are minor vs. serious, behaviors that target individuals vs. organizations, and behaviors that require low and high technical skill. A few examples include: cyberbullying, cyberloafing, exposing company data, etc. With cyberbullying, employees can virtually harass other co-workers within the workplace. Goldbricking aka cyberloafing consists of employees using the company’s internet access to do personal activities that aren’t done within the workplace such as online shopping, using or checking social media, or catching up on personal emails (Kawamoto 2022). If an employee gets fired from their job, they can abuse the company’s network to expose data and make the company more vulnerable. Technology within the workplace helps benefit company production but it can also lead to an open door of risks if not treated properly. 

References:

Kawamoto, Dawn. “Cyberloafing: What Is It and How to Prevent It.” Built In, 28 Nov. 2022, https://builtin.com/blog/cyberloafing-what-it-and-how-prevent-it.

Oakley, Richelle L., and A. F. Salam. “Cyber Citizens and Cyber Deviance: Exploring Social and Technical Factors as Antecedents to Cyber Deviance and the Implications for Cyber Citizenship.” AIS Electronic Library (AISeL), 2012, https://aisel.aisnet.org/sighci2012/7/.

Venkatraman, Srinivasan, et al. “The ‘Darth’ Side of Technology Use: An Inductively Derived Typology of Cyberdeviance.” Taylor & Francis Online, Informa UK Limited, 17 Dec. 2018, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07421222.2018.1523531.