To be able to discuss this topic I first wanted to make sure I had a clear understanding of what deviance was. Deviance according to thefreedictionary.com is, “divergence from the accepted social norms of behavior. Deviance can be beneficial to society if unorthodox behavior leads to creativity or innovation. Alternatively deviance may be harmful as in the case of crime.” Now with that out of the way we can move on to the next part of the process, which is to discuss what are the social norms of behavior in the workplace. I’m continuing with the belief that the accepted social norm of behavior in the workplace is to go into the office, spend a small amount of time socializing with your peers at the water cooler or coffee machine, break for lunch for roughly thirty to sixty minutes, and then continue working even though Inc. magazine suggested back in 2016 that the average employee is only really productive for about three hours a day (https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html). That being said I still think the view of the norm is that you’re working studiously for 6-8 hours a day at your desk and to that degree cyber technology has created many opportunities for workplace deviance.

Lets use the example of social media and Facebook, now Meta to be specific. But just how much of a deviance from the norm is that? According to NBC News (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/time-wasted-facebook-could-be-costing-us-trillions-lost-productivity-n511421) the lost productivity could be costing companies trillions of dollars, but how has cyber technology created the opportunity to do that. Many companies now block Facebook from being able to be accessed from their network, but proxy servers are a technology that allow you to get around that. It’s not possible for a company to block every proxy site there is. Some companies also just block the url and not the IP, so IP addressing itself could be used to bypass these provisions and allow for deviance at work. Then there is the use virtual machines in the workplace. Normally they are used for productivity, developing, and testing, but then again they can just as easily be configured and used to circumvent blocks meant to not allow for deviance at work. Normally all these blocks are put on the corporate network, however the same isn’t applied to the companies guest network. So the cyber technology of network segmentation could be used as an opportunity for deviance. Then if there is a company that allows users to connect to WiFi in the office, even if they have blocks in place to prevent access to social media sites users can just as easily use another cyber technology, the virtual private network on their phones to bypass these restrictions and hide all your activity. There are many cyber technologies, all of which companies have to defend themselves from outside attackers, that can also be used as an opportunity for employees to engage in workplace deviance.