Workplace deviance has always been an issue that companies must deal with, but due to the increase in the use of cyber technology, workplace deviance has become much more safe for the deviant employee, more prevalent, much easier and much more dangerous. Technology allows employees to more discreetly harm the company through leaks or other harmful means. This gives them more confidence which both increases the likelihood of a disgruntled employee performing deviant actions and reduces the chance that  said employee will be caught, so they may do it again. The repetition of deviant actions by a single employee hurts the company multiple times, and may also inspire other disgruntled employees to act in a similar way. This may create a sort of chain reaction, which would cause unbelievable amounts of harm to the company. This chain reaction must be prevented by the company by installing the proper cyber security measures. Secondly, the amount of information that is accessible to employees has also increased, meaning that they have more information to harm the company with. Before cyber technology became a widespread tool, information was harder to access and leak out to the public. If there was no technology in use at a company, the deviant employee would only have a small amount of information, making their actions less harmful, and would have less means of distributing the information they did have to the public. Now, employees have access to way more through technology, so the damage they can do and the ease that they can do it have also drastically increased. Overall, technology has had an absolutely massive effect on workplace deviance, an effect that has caused many companies grief over the years. Through technology, workplace deviance has become more common, easier, safer, and more damaging to the company. No wonder so many companies suffer from things like data leaks so often.

Sources:

Workplace Deviance definition. (2013, July 29). What is workplace deviance? HRZone. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://www.hrzone.com/hr-glossary/what-is-workplace-deviance. 

Mercado, B. K. (2017, June). Cyber Counterproductive Work Behaviors: Measurement, Prediction, and Means for Reduction. CUNY Academic Works. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3079&context=gc_etds.