Research in criminology, sociology, and management, has focused on deviant behaviors with technology, termed cyber deviance. This term refers to inappropriate or criminal behavior in a digital context (Holt et al. 2010). Old crimes such as theft, fraud, and harassment find new forms in cyberspace and information technologies. Other crimes, such as hacking or Internet-solicited prostitution, are contested deviance, with significant subgroups labeling certain actions as nondeviant and within a reasonable moral code. Workplace deviance refers to intentional, mischievous trials to sabotage an organization by causing problems in the workplace (Agwa, 2018). Workplace deviance becomes cyber deviancy, and it provides the following opportunities;

i) Internet surfing during work hours.

The outcomes of this misuse results in costs for the organization; misuse of valuable

employee time which is supposed to be spent on work tasks, and related network usage

expended in pursuit of non-work purposes.

ii) General Internet abuse.

This abuse includes such activities as software piracy, intellectual

property theft through illegal hacking, or unauthorized entry into co-workers or

supervisors’ computers, corporate databases, payroll, and financial records.

iii) Cyber slacking- has been defined by behaviors that include online gambling, stock trading,

online romance, chat, or visiting Pornographic websites.

iv) Misusing corporate email and network connectivity providing access to the internet for

such activities as cyber aggression, where workplace email is either used intentionally for

the expression of aggression or where emails are used by staff in such a way that it results

in the perception of attack by a focal target (Sangh, 2020).

v) Employees using organizational ICTs for non-work related activities such as playing

games, doing personal banking online, updating their blogs or websites during work hours,

frittering away organizational time using email.

References

Singh, Y. (2020). Workplace Deviance: A Conceptual Framework. In Analyzing Workplace

Deviance in Modern Organizations (pp. 1-22). IGI Global.

Ford, D., Garmsiri, M., Hancock, A., & Hickman, R. (2019). A Review and Extension of

Cyber-Deviance Literature: Why It Likely Persists. In R. Landers (Ed.), The Cambridge

Handbook of Technology and Employee Behavior (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology,

pp. 544-579). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108649636.021

Agwa, A. M. F. (2018). Workplace Deviance Behaviors. Leadership, 25.