Abusive Supervision and Employees Cyber-Loafing: Examination of Intermediation, Impediment and Spark

abstract

This research examines the nexus between Abusive Supervision and Cyber-loafing behavior in banking sector employees. The banking sector is suitable for examination due to the prevalence of hierarchical structure and stress, creating a greater likelihood of abusive treatment. Through convenience sampling, we targeted 201 upper-level employees of various commercial banks in Pakistan and employed partial least squares structural equation modeling using SmartPLS. We found that (1) abusive treatment (ß¿=¿0.44) triggers cyber-loafing in employees. (2) Further, employee motivation (ß¿=¿¿.37) significantly mediates this relationship. (3) In addition to this, moral disengagement (ß¿=¿.39) adds fuel to the fire. (4) However, organizational commitment (ß¿=¿¿.47) moderates the effect of abusive treatment on cyber-loafing behavior. The findings are valuable for authorities and policymakers to raise accountability, foster a supportive culture, initiate training programs and put efforts to ensure employee commitment. Further, the study uncovers the abuse-led behavior by adding mediation of motivation, spark of moral disengagement and moderation of organizational commitment. It documents the phenomena under the mixed guidelines of social exchange theory, social cognitive theory and conservation of resources theory. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).