Workplace gossip: An integrative review of its antecedents, functions, and consequences

Abstract

The workplace gossip construct is currently divergently interpreted by organizational scholars, with perceptions of its origins, functions, and impacts varying widely. In this comprehensive narrative review, we seek to provide much needed clarity around the often studied and frequently demonstrated employee behavior of workplace gossip by synthesizing gossip studies conducted during the past four decades in both the organization and psychology literatures. The first section of our review considers measures, designs, and theoretical frameworks featured in these studies. In the second section, we consolidate and integrate research findings from the extant literatures into three emerging categories of gossip antecedents (intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational antecedents), four categories of gossip functions (information exchange, ego enhancement, social integration, and social segregation), and three categories of gossip consequences (consequences for gossip senders/ recipients, for gossip targets, and beyond the triads). In the last section, we propose an integrative model to guide future investigations on the antecedents, functions, and consequences of workplace gossip. Our review aims to provide a clear overview of existing gossip research across the organization and psychology literatures and to highlight several important trends to open up various opportunities for future impactful workplace gossip scholarship.

Crushing each other with gossip in nursing academia: Sophisticated communication or a symptom of dysfunction?

“…[23] Hostile behaviours in higher education environments are due to sociocultural power differences and various forms of discrimination. [3,4,13] Young women and those viewed with the most significant potential for career advancement are often the victims of bullying. [24] Early career victims of negative gossip have the stress of working hard to reshape and protect their workplace reputation.…”

“…The literature exploring why people gossip includes themes such as wanting revenge, attention or acceptance, and jealousy. [4,6,12,14,22,23] Sending malicious rumours appears to derive from poor self-esteem. [18] In the academic setting, Bullies usually lack self-confidence and try to divert attention by focusing on someone else, traditionally viewed as a threat but not necessarily a subordinate.…”

“…In higher education settings, gossip is more damaging than physical violence. Gossip is a serious workplace issue; gossiping individuals demonstrate unprofessional behaviour [4] and participate in psychological bullying. [5] Gossip can be considered a part of schadenfreude, where envy plays an interactive enjoyment of mistreating others.…”

Workplace gossip and the evolution of friendship relations: the role of complex contagion

“…Previous studies claim that humans devote around two-thirds of their speaking time to sharing evaluative information about others' deeds and traits (Dunbar et al 1997;Emler 1994), and organization studies report that up to 90% of employees engage in it (Grosser et al 2012). Meanwhile, the relevance of workplace gossip to the functioning of organizations and their members has been amply documented (Beersma and Kleef 2012;Beersma, Kleef, and Dijkstra 2019;Michelson et al 2010;Mills 2010;Sun et al 2022). Despite its negative connotation and much research addressing its dysfunctional aspects (Danzinger 1988;Duffy et al 2002;Liu et al 2020;Martinescu et al 2021;Ribeiro and Blakeley 1995;Robinson and Bennett 1995), gossip also has multiple positive outcomes for individuals and groups (Brady et al 2017;Giardini and Wittek 2019a;Wilson 2005, 2010;Noon and Delbridge 1993).…”

“…Note that "gossip" here can refer to the communication of positive or negative content about the object or target(Brady, Brown, and Liang 2017;Dores Cruz et al 2021;Spoelma and Hetrick 2021;Sun, Schilpzand, and Liu 2022).…”