Do not ask, but you shall still receive: Newcomer reactions to receiving negative gossip

Abstract

As research regarding the targets and initiators of workplace gossip is gaining traction, one perspective that remains overlooked is the gossip receiver. Organizational newcomers are a particularly relevant population to study the impact of receiving negative gossip on because they use social information to navigate an unfamiliar organizational terrain. We propose a parallel moderated mediation model in which receiving negative gossip has contradicting effects on newcomer job anxiety through perceived social inclusion and negative rumination, and agreeableness as a boundary condition of the effects of receiving negative gossip. We collected data from 202 newcomers using a four‐wave time‐lagged design and found that receiving negative gossip increased newcomer job anxiety via negative rumination but did not decrease job anxiety via perceived social inclusion. Further, agreeableness moderated the effect of receiving negative gossip on negative rumination (but not perceived social inclusion) such that the effect of receiving negative gossip on negative rumination was stronger for less agreeable newcomers. Lastly, the indirect effect of receiving negative gossip on job anxiety via negative rumination was stronger for less agreeable newcomers. Theoretical and practical implications specific to gossip and newcomers are discussed.

When and why creative performance influences job self‐efficacy: Pride as a mediator and workaholism as a moderator

“…Indeed, research suggests that because of the investment of extreme efforts and time into their work, workaholics experience more negative consequences, such as burnout and low levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and their workaholic behaviors do not improve their job performance (Clark et al, 2016; Xu et al, 2023). Hence, researchers can broaden the scope of workaholism research by expanding the roles of workaholism in research models similar to other individual differences (e.g., the Big Five), which have been commonly examined as moderators and thus integrated into various areas such as job performance, interpersonal relationships, health, and well‐being (e.g., Hughes & Freier, 2023; Jalil et al, 2022; Ma et al, 2021; Spanouli & Hofmans, 2021). Doing so may provide a more complete picture of workaholism and add to our understanding of the implications of workaholism.…”

Peeling Away the Layers of Workplace Gossip: A Framework, Review, and Future Research Agenda to Study Workplace Gossip as a Dynamic and Complex Behavior

“…Only rarely did research directly observe conversations in situ (e.g., ethnographic observations [60]). As presented in Table 1, the majority of the studies included in our review, however, measured unspecific gossip behaviors by investigating either accumulated gossip states over a period of time in the past (e.g., [75,99]) or inquiring about general experiences of gossip at work (e.g., [55,59]). While informative, this high level of aggregation and generalization of workplace gossip neglects specific situational differences and transient variations in valence, content, and functions of workplace gossip behavior [26,80].…”