Role of self-rationalization and perceived company web policy for employee personal web usage in the workplace

It is generally understood, organizations that provide web access to employees' in the workplace for work-related reasons, has the potential to be used for personal-related reasons. Personal Web Usage (PWU) behavior is a conscious decision making process for differentiating web-activity. In order to justify certain web-behavior, an employee will develop an attitude towards their own behavior which is a self-rationalization strategy. We propose this is a form of cognitive dissonance, similar to a `vice or virtue' decision. For employee web usage the two cognitions would be `work-related' or `non-work-related' internet activity. The present study extends to organizational literatures by conducting a usage assessment, examines attitudes for web usage during company time, and explores employee perceived company web-policy. An exploratory open-ended interview was conducted with a sample of 10 employees to analyze the employee attitudes for the use of internet technology at the workplace. The findings demonstrated distinctive employee web usage patterns where finding PWU to be not only permissible, but also rationalize its usage. We determine this rationalization and the PWU activity are directly conditioned or adjusted by perceived company web-policy, where strict or lenient perceived policy is seen as a threat or opportunity in levels. We conclude on the basis of our interview narrations of PWU experiences in having Individual, Process, and Organizational orientation. Our interview method and PWU coding can contribute to better profiling PWU for Chinese employees. These dimensions include separate categorical variables that we suggest can be useful predictors of the employee web-usage decision making process.