1. Introduction
Increased internet use over the past few decades has been accompanied by an increased consumption and societal acceptance of pornography (Kor et al., 2014). A lot of researchers have paid their attention to addictive nature of certain sexual behaviors and practices, such as pornography use (Griffiths, 2012; Kafka, 2001; 2010; Young, 2008). And, most of studies argue that many individuals believe themselves to be addicted to internet pornography (Dunn et al., 2012; Grubbs et al., 2015).
Generally, the relevant studies have focused on adolescents (Brown & L’Engle, 2009; Peter & Valkenburg, 2011). They have been interested in only sex-related behaviors such as sexually aggressive behavior (Kingston et al., 2009; Malamuth & Huppin, 2005) and casual sex behavior (Morgan, 2011).
However, as the internet media have been used in the workplace, it is necessary to investigate the effects of such internet pornography exposure on the organizational behaviors of employees. For example, if employees use and commit internet pornography excessively rather than work hard, it will make a matter of great concern in the workplaces. However, few studies examined those effects.
In this study, to examine the organizational behaviors related to internet pornography addiction further, the first step is to investigate the organizational factors which arouse internet pornography addiction. Second, the present study will investigate how internet pornography addiction influence the organizational or social attitudes of employee. Finally, this study will find out the factors which can manage internet pornography addiction in the workplace
2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development
Some researchers have argued that internet pornography addiction represents a distinct psychological disorder (Shapira et al., 2003) whereas others have suggested that it is simply a subset of hypersexual tendencies more broadly (Kafka, 2001; Kaplan & Krueger, 2010). Especially, the lack of a specific diagnosis addressing compulsive use of internet pornography has led to a variety of definitions of internet pornography addiction (Short et al., 2012). Some definitions have focused on objective behavior (Cooper et al., 1999). However, most definitions have focused on the subjective experience of the individual, such as the perceived cycle of use (Young, 2008) or factors such as efforts in obtaining pornography, perceived lack of control, and distress regarding use (Grubbs et al., 2015).
This study seeks to examine perceived addiction to internet pornography, focusing on the tendency of some individuals to view their own use of pornography as compulsive or addictive. The interest in perceived addiction to internet pornography separates the present work from prior studies of this topic. This study does not assume that self-perceived addiction to internet pornography means actual addictive behavior but investigates the tendency of individuals to make such self-diagnoses. Furthermore, considering many signs of psychological distress, such as general compulsivity (Egan & Parmar, 2013), depression and despair (Cavaglion, 2008; Philaretou et al., 2005), and anxiety (Grubbs et al., 2015), are associated with perceived addiction, perceived addiction is also important to clinical treatment. In designing the present study, this study is specifically interested in examining factors that may be associated with perceived internet pornography addiction.
The relevant studies focus on the correlates of excessive use and its associations with interpersonal, financial, legal, emotional and sexual distress (Boies et al., 2005; Philaretou et al., 2005; Ross et al., 2012; Stack et al., 2004; Twohig et al., 2009). Correlational research suggests that reports of more frequent pornography use have been positively associated with less progressive attitudes toward gender roles (Brown & L’Engle, 2009), right wing authoritarian tendencies (Levert, 2007), feelings of isolation and loneliness (Yoder et al., 2005; Schneider, 2000), increased levels in psychological symptoms (Brand et al., 2011; Nelson et al., 2010; Philaretou et al., 2005), longing for increased personal intimacy with other people (Popovic, 2011), and lower levels of relationship and sexual satisfaction (Morgan, 2011).
The purpose of this study is to examine the organizational behaviors related to internet pornography addiction. Therefore, in the perspective of psychological distress arousing internet pornography addiction, the present study pays its attention to work environmental factors arousing psychological distress and suggest workplace violence such as workplace bullying and abusive supervision as two kinds of antecedents of internet pornography addiction. As typical factors which produce stress in workplace, workplace bullying comes from more than one person, while abusive supervision is fulfilled by a boss.
First, workplace bullying was defined as situations in which one or more individuals persistently over a period of time perceive themselves to be on the receiving end of negative actions from one or several persons, in a situation where the target (employee) of bullying has difficulty defending him or herself against these actions (Einarsen, 2005). The latter definition reveals the most important elements of workplace bullying—that is, negativity, persistency, duration, and power imbalance (inferior position of a targeted person).
Since the introduction of workplace bullying phenomenon, extensive research has been conducted related to the negative consequences (Astrauskaite et al., 2010; Hogh et al., 2011). The early research demonstrated that exposure to bullying may have highly detrimental effects on targets’ psychological health. Yet, the studies also show that some targets exhibit only moderate levels of stress as, for instance, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Second, abusive supervision is described as subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact (Tepper, 2000). It represents a context within which stressful stimuli impact subordinates to produce various strain reactions. Subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision have been associated with numerous stress-related outcomes, including job tension (Breaux et al., 2008), anxiety (Tepper et al., 2007), psychological well-being (Hobman et al., 2009), physical health (Bowling & Michel, 2011), insomnia (Rafferty et al., 2010), problem drinking (Bamberger & Bacharach, 2006), burnout (Carlson et al., 2012), and emotional exhaustion (Yagil, 2006).
In the transactional stress models, the nature and severity of emotional reactions following exposure to abusive supervision are functions of dynamic interplay between event characteristics and individual appraisal and coping processes (Folkman & Lazarus, 1991; Lazarus, 1999; Zapf & Einarsen, 2003). Especially, abusive supervision is characterized as a prolonged exposure to interpersonal acts of a negative nature, with which the target is unable to cope. These characteristics are likely to make up a highly stressful situation characterized by lack of control.
The stress from workplace bullying and abusive supervision may then exacerbate individuals’ undesirable moods. This then leads such individuals to engage in the internet pornography addictive behavior even more as a way of relieving dysphoric mood states. Consequently, when users repeat this cyclical pattern of relieving undesirable moods with internet pornography watching, the level of psychological dependency on internet pornography watching increases. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is established.
[Hypothesis 1] Workplace bullying is positively associated with internet pornography addiction.
[Hypothesis 2] Abusive supervision is positively associated with internet pornography addiction
Most of researchers have focused on the potentially negative consequences associated with pornography use (Do¨ring, 2009; Short et al., 2012). Especially, they paid their attention to sexually aggressive behavior (Kingston et al., 2009; Malamuth & Huppin, 2005) and casual sex behavior (Morgan, 2011).
However, few studies of internet pornography addiction have been interested in the context of workplace. Irrespective of negative effect on sex-related behaviors, if employees spend a lot of time using and committing internet pornography excessively rather than work hard, it will make a matter of negative consequences in the workplace. The present study suggests organizational commitment and work-family conflict as two kinds of negative consequences from internet pornography addiction.
First, organizational commitment was described as the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Becker, 1960; Mowday et al., 1979). Especially, Meyer and Allen's approach (1991) which comprises affective, continuance, and normative commitment is extensively acknowledged and came as the superior one (Gellatly et al., 2006; Powell & Meyer, 2004).
This was one of the primal efforts to forward the meaning of commitment that demonstrates a thoughtful viewpoint for employees' relation with their organization.
Second, work–family conflict refers to a form of inter-role conflict in which role pressures from work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect. That is, participation in the work (or family) role is made more difficult by virtue of participation in the family (or work) role (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Consistently with this definition, researchers have recognized the bi- directional nature of conflict and argue that conflict can occur in both directions— from work-to-family (WFC) and from family-to-work (FWC) (Carlson et al., 2000; Frone et al., 1992). Furthermore, researchers have recognized that work–family conflict can manifest in three forms: time-based conflict, behavior-based conflict and strain-based conflict, and each form of conflict can be measured separately (Carlson et al., 2000).
A large number of factors influencing organizational commitment have been recognized which consist of organizational aspects, job aspects and personal aspects (Mowday et al., 1979). And the predictors of work family conflict mainly include dispositional (i.e., Type A and negative affectivity) and situational (i.e., role conflict and role ambiguity from both the work and family domain) factors (Carson, 1999). However, there is no research work to investigate internet pornography addiction influencing the organizational commitment and work family conflict. Similar to other context, if employees use internet pornography more in terms of time spent on usage, they are less involved with their real life in workplace, which their organizational commitment decreases and don’t have time enough to play their roles in work or family domain, which their work family conflict increases. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is established.
[Hypothesis 3] Internet pornography addiction is negatively associated with organizational commitment
[Hypothesis 4] Internet pornography addiction is positively associated with work-family conflict
In their extensive summary of research on workplace stress, Kahn & Byosiere (1992) concluded that organizational theory and research have been too little concerned with organizational and interpersonal factors that might serve as moderators, buffers, or even as antidotes to stresses and their effects, and that empirical evidence in this area is essentially nonexistent. Subsequent researchers addressed this oversight, primarily by focusing on the potential moderating role of personal factors (Burke et al., 1993) and interpersonal sources of support (Fisher, 1985; Ganster et al., 1986; Kaufman & Beehr, 1986). However, few researchers have investigated the role of organizational factors in alleviating the deleterious effects of employee stress.
If research is to contribute to the prevention and constructive management of stress from workplace bullying and abusive supervision, as well as the healing of individual and organizational wounds resulting from such interaction, different kinds of information must be provided. The research questions addressed may be formulated as follows: who does what to whom, why, where, when, for how long, and with what consequences? The thorough documentation of the frequencies, risks groups, behaviors involved, and its consequences has just started. However, research on workplace bullying and abusive supervision must also go beyond problem documentation. Therefore, to implement effective interventions, it needs to develop theoretical models and test it empirically. This study suggests perceived organizational support as an organizational factor to relieve from workplace bullying and abusive supervision arousing internet pornography addiction.
Perceived organizational support (POS) is defined as the extent to which employees perceive that their contributions are valued by their organization and that the firm cares about their well-being (Eisenberger et al., 1990; Eisenberger et al., 1986; Wayne et al., 1997). While there is a large amount of indirect evidence suggesting that POS will buffer the role stress-outcome relationship, few researchers have directly examined this possible moderation effect. Several researchers (Carlson & Perrewe, 1999; La Rocco et al., 1980; Parasuraman et al., 1992) argue that social support reduces the negative effects of role stressors on various work outcomes by helping employees cope with the stress. However, these studies focused on coworker and supervisor support, not POS. In addition, empirical findings for the moderation effect of social support have been inconsistent (Viswesvaran et al., 1999). The present study located three studies that specifically examined the potential of POS to moderate a work stress-outcome relationship. Leather et al. (1998) concluded that POS moderates the negative effect of workplace violence (a work stressor) on both job satisfaction and organizational commitment, while George et al. (1993) report that both organizational and social support moderate the negative relationship between exposure to AIDS patients and negative employee mood.
However, neither of these studies examines the possibility that POS may help to buffer the effects of stress from workplace bullying or abusive supervision on internet pornography addiction. Theoretically, POS may act to attenuate the relationship between the stress from workplace bullying or abusive supervision and internet pornography addiction because employees see POS as type of coping mechanism. In other words, support provided by the organization may not only help eliminate a certain amount of stress experienced by workplace bullying or abusive supervision, but also may buffer the negative effects of stress that cannot be removed due to the nature of the organizational situation. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is established.
[Hypothesis 5] POS decreases the positive relationship between workplace bullying and internet pornography addiction.
[Hypothesis 6] POS decreases the positive relationship between abusive supervision and internet pornography addiction. Figure 1 Shows the research model in which this study suggests the above hypotheses.
[Figure 1] Research model
3. Method
3.1. Data collection
The objective of the study was to identify the factors of the organizational behaviors related to internet pornography addiction based on empirical analysis. The factors of organizational behaviors can be identified by measuring the organization’s members' perceptions of workplace situation. The survey research method is very useful in collecting data from a large number of individuals in a relatively short period of time and at better cost. Hence, for the current study, the questionnaire survey was chosen for data collection.
All participants received a paper-and-pencil questionnaire with an accompanying letter that explained the purpose of the survey, emphasized voluntary participation, and guaranteed confidently. Participants were asked to fill out the questionnaire and put it back into an envelope that was collected by the researcher.
This study is based on responses from workers in Korean companies. 319 responses were usable for analysis. Among the participants, 152 (47.6 percent) were men and 167 (52.4 percent) women.
The age of them includes 20s(24.1%), 30s(25.7%), 40s (25.4%), and 50s(24.8%). The number of employee in their companies is less than 10(21.9%), 11-50(28.8%), 51-300 (29.5%), 301-1,000(7.8%), and more than 1001(11.9%). The industry of their companies includes manufacturing (27.9%), construction (10.3%), service (33.2%), public agency (6.0%), wholesale-retail (8.2%), and etc. (14.4%). The position of them includes staff (42.3%), assistant manager (18.5%), manager (15.4%), senior manager (14.4%), director (6.9%), etc. (2.5%). The tenure of them includes less than 5 years (51.1%), 5–10 (24.5%), 10–15 (13.8%), 15–20 (4.4%), more than 20 years (6.3%). The level of their education includes middle school (0.6%), high school (16.3%), community college (21.0%), undergraduate (51.4%), and graduate school (10.7%). The martial status of them are married (57.4%) and single (42.6%).
3.2. Measurement
This study used six separate items to measure the each variable of workplace bullying, abusive supervision, pornography addiction, organizational commitment, workfamily conflict, and perceived organizational support.
[Table 1] The measurements of variables
3.3. Data analysis
To reassure the validity and reliability of multiple-item scales used in this study, a confirmative factor analysis (CFA) with AMOS 20.0 for the five constructs, including workplace bullying, abusive supervision, pornography addiction, organizational commitment, work-family conflict, and perceived organizational support was conducted. In order to test the hypotheses, this study used SPSS 20 and conducted a series of multiple regression analyses, which can examine the relationship among the sub-factors of variables, for most of researches on addiction investigate the sub-factors of addiction which explain the characteristics of the addiction.
4. Results
4.1. Verification of validity and reliability
The validity of variables is verified through the principal components method and factor analysis with the varimax method. The criteria for determining the number of factors is defined as a 1.0 eigen value. I applied factors for analysis only if the factor loading was greater than 0.5 (factor loading represents the correlation scale between a factor and other variables). In the factor analysis, we eliminated two items in the variables of shared vision and system thinking. The reliability of variables is judged by internal consistency as assessed by Cronbach’s alpha. We used surveys and regarded each as one measure only if their Cronbach’s alpha values were 0.7 or higher.
4.2. Hypothesis testing
To analyze the relationships between workplace violence including workplace bullying/abusive supervision and internet pornography addiction, the results in [Table 2], consisting control and independent variables, show that workplace bullying and abusive supervision have statistical significances with sub-factors of internet pornography addiction. Job-related bullying has positive relationships with excessive use (β = .144, p < .01), control difficulties (β = .191, p < .01) and use for escape/avoid negative emotions (β = .073, p < .01). And abusive supervision has statistical significances with sub-factors of internet pornography addiction. Abusive supervision has positive relationships with excessive use (β = .017, p < .01) and use for escape/avoid negative emotions (β = .124, p < .01). These imply that the more job-related bullying or abusive supervision people perceive in the workplace, the stronger their internet pornograph addiction are, which is expected in the hypotheses.
[Table 2] Analysis 1
p < .05*, p < .01**
The results in [Table 3] show the effects of sub-factors of internet pornography addiction on the sub-factors of organizational commitment and work-family conflict. Moreover, excessive use has a negative effect on continuance commitment (β = -.185, p < .01). Control difficulties has a positive effect on work to family conflict (β = .127, p < .01). Use for escape/avoid negative emotions has a negative effect on affective commitment (β = -.132, p < .01). These show that the stronger internet pornography addiction people have, the weaker their organizational commitment and the stronger work-family conflict are, which is expected in the hypotheses.
[Table 3] Analysis 2
p < .05 *, p < .01 **
In [Table 4], the results, consisting of moderators, shows the interactions between the workplace bullying/abusive supervision and the sub-factors of POS. POS has a negative effect on the relationship (β = -.134, p < .01) between job-related bullying and excessive use and the relationship (β = -.072, p < .01) between abusive supervision and excessive use. And, POS has a negative effect on the relationship (β = -.175, p < .01) between job-related bullying and use for escape/avoid negative emotions and the relationship (β = -.064, p < .01) between abusive supervision and escape/avoid negative emotions. Based on our results, when people have higher POS in workplace, workplace bullying and abusive supervision have weaker impact on their internet pornography addiction.
[Table 4] Analysis 3
p < .05 *, p < .01
5. Discussions and Conclusions
The results of the present study are summarized as follows. First, the more employees suffer from workplace bullying or abusive supervision, the more likely to be addicted in internet pornography. Second, the more addictive employee are in internet pornography, their organizational commitment decreases, while their work-family conflict increases. Finally, when employees perceive more support provided by the organization, they are less likely to be addictive in internet pornography which is aroused by abusive supervision.
This study makes two kinds of research contributions. First, this study introduces internet pornography addiction in the context of workplace and investigate workplace violence related to it. It is the first to empirically verify the antecedents and consequences of internet pornography addiction in the workplace. Second, this study suggests and empirically verify that POS is an organizational factor moderating the relationship between workplace violence and internet pornography addiction.
Moreover, this study provides some of managerial implications to corporate executives who try to manage organizational attitude. Because internet pornography addiction occurs in reality, it is also not ignorable in the context of workplace. As the competition between the companies become stronger, the companies requires more internal competition among employees and employees behave more abnormally. It arouse internet pornography addiction, which in turn decreases employees’ organizational commitment and increase work-family conflict. Given this situation, corporate executives need to assign positions by considering interpersonal factors.
By this research results, the present study could have several insights into the relationships between organizational behaviors and internet pornography addiction. However, it should also acknowledge the following limitations in this research. First, this study collected the responses from employees who are working at Korean companies. This study’s methods to data samples in other countries can be applied in order to check the constancy of the variables’ relationships. Second, as the variables were all measured at the same time, the relationships are not sure to be constant.
Although the survey questions occurred in reverse order of the analysis model to prevent additional issues, the existence of causal relationships between variables is a possibility. A future studies need to investigate other types of workplace violence such as organizational politics and examine other addiction including SNS or game