An Exploratory Investigation of the Impact of Internet Usage at Work Productivity.

The introduction of internet usage into the work place has changed the dynamics of work, productivity, and management. There are two types of motivations of internet usage: intrinsic motivation (perceived enjoyment) and extrinsic motivation (perceived usefulness) at the workplace (Teo, Lim and Lai, 1999), but interestingly, each one of them can affect a firm very differently with regard to productivity. This paper studies connections between internet usage by employees at work and how that impacts on firm's productivity based on the industry that it belongs to. Primary data were gathered via a self-reported survey, and the results were analyzed. Results indicate that the level of internet usage is significantly associated with firm productivity. Aside from the results, this paper also leaves suggestions for companies incurring a substantial loss of productivity as a result of not implementing internet governance policies such as Employee Internet Management (EIM) systems to monitor employees of internet usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]