Date of Award

2014

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Horvath, Michael

Subject Headings

Organization -- Management, Work -- Psychological aspects, Computers -- Access control, Work and family -- Psychological aspects, counterproductive work behavior, personal use of work computers, self-control, work-family balance, job autonomy, domain centrality

Abstract

The personal use of work computers (PWC) is a common occurrence at all levels at an organization, from entry level employees to upper management. Constant connectivity to technology through the availability of the Internet at home, at work, and on mobile devices has led to work entering the non-work domain and vice versa. Participants (N = 341) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk service and were asked questions regarding levels of self-control, job autonomy, work centrality, work-family conflict, and PWC in order to determine how these relationships may interact to predict PWC. In addition, PWC was explored as a means to "balance the ledger" and restore an employee's work-family balance. Significant main effects were found for all variables in predicting PWC, with the exception of autonomy. In addition, a significant interaction was found between self-control and work centrality in predicting PWC, indicating that employees with high work centrality and low self-control commit the most PWC behavior. Results of the study indicate that while PWC did not lead to an increase in work-family balance, restricting PWC behavior is not necessarily beneficial to an organization

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