Personal Web Usage in the Workplace: A Guide to Effective Human Resources Management

An important aspect of managing human capital in the 21st century workplace is managing the interface between humans and information technology, particularly the World Wide Web. The Web has changed not only how and where business is conducted, but also how and where work is done. Personal web usage has created many desirable organizational outcomes such as, reducing the cost of communication, restructuring how work is performed. However, it has also generated undesirable outcomes, for instance, loss of intellectual property, sexual harassment lawsuits, productivity losses due to surfing usage, security threats, and network bandwidth overload by visiting web sites for travel, leisure, and sports, and news. The mechanisms controlling the interface of individual and institution in this flexible, open, autonomous work environment created by the Web are emergent phenomena, and the lines between legitimate usage and usage are just beginning to be understood. Personal Web Usage in the Workplace: A Guide to Effective Human Resources Management examines topics which embrace a wide array of Personal Web Usage issues such as antecedents of Web usage, frameworks/models of Web usage, Web technologies for monitoring usage, Web usage within other cultures and countries, Measurement issues of Web usage, and the impact of Web usage among others.

Murugan Anandarajan is an assistant professor of management information systems in the department of management at Drexel University. His current research interests include artificial intelligence-based classification, artificial life, and Internet addiction and abuse. His research has appeared in journals such as Behavior and Information Technology, Computers and Operations Research, Decision Sciences, Industrial Data Management Systems, Information and Management, International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Global Information Systems, Journal of International Business Studies, and the Omega-International Journal of Management Science, among others. He is the editor of a special section on "Internet Abuse in the Workplace" in the Communications of the ACM (December 2001). He is a coauthor of the book entitiled Artificial Neural Networks in Glaucoma Classification: A Concise Approach (2002). Anandarajan was awarded the Lindback Award for outstanding research (1999) and the Pearson Horner Award for the best application paper (1999).

Claire A. Simmers received her PhD from Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in strategic management. She is currently an assistant professor in the management and information systems department at the Erivan K. Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She teaches courses at the undergraduate, MBA and executive level in business policy, international management, and developing managerial skill sets. Her research interests are: strategic decision-making, work/life issues, and understanding the sociotechnical interface in using the Internet. Her work has been published in Behaviour and Information Technology, the Journal of Business and Economics Studies, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior. She is an active member of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Information Resources Management Association.