Introduction: With rapid internet development, employee cyberloafing behavior—using electronic devices for non-work online activities during working hours—has become increasingly severe, attracting widespread attention from academia and practitioners.
Purpose: Based on Resource Conservation Theory and Sense-making Theory, this study explores how ethical leadership mitigates employee cyberloafing behavior through job crafting and thriving at work.
Method: This research consists of two studies. Study 1 employed a questionnaire survey collecting valid data from 369 corporate employees to examine the relationship between ethical leadership and employee cyberloafing behavior, and verify the chain mediating effects of job crafting and thriving at work. Study 2 confirmed causal relationships through a scenario experiment with 172 corporate employees, validating the chain mediation model.
Results: The results show: (1) ethical leadership has a significant negative impact on employee cyberloafing behav ior; (2) job crafting and thriving at work mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employee cyberloafing behavior; (3) job crafting and thriving at work fully mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employee cyberloafing behavior in a chain, meaning that ethical leadership reduces employee cyberloafing by promoting job crafting and thereby enhancing thriving at work.
Conclusions: By introducing Resource Conservation Theory and Sensemaking Theory, this study explains the impact of ethical leadership on cyberloafing and its psychological mechanisms from a positive perspective, providing new theoretical and managerial insights for cyberloafing behavior research.