| Abstrakt: |
Gossip, or informal and evaluative conversations between two or more persons about absent others (Eder & Enke, 1991; Kurland & Pelled, 2000), is pervasive. People spend at least two-thirds of their daily conversations gossiping (Dunbar, Marriott, & Duncan, 1997). In the workplace in particular, over 90% of the U.S. workforce engages in gossiping behaviors (Grosser, Lopez-Kidwell, Labianca, & Ellwardt, 2012). Despite its ubiquity, organizational scholars appear to have given short shrift to the phenomenon of workplace gossip. Therefore, critical issues on workplace gossip remain to be addressed. First, gossip has been predominantly studied as a type of immoral and dysfunctional workplace behavior, causing harm to the gossiped targets (Hess & Hagen, 2006; Low, Frey, & Brockman, 2010; McAndrew, 2014; Robinson & Bennett, 1995). However, more recent work has challenged this view by differentiating positive gossip from negative gossip (Brady, Brown, & Liang, 2017) and exploring the positive effects of gossip (Baumeister, Zhang, & Vohs, 2004; Feinburg, Willer, Stellar, & Keltner, 2012). Second, gossip denotes a complex phenomenon involving multiple parties, including gossipers, gossip recipients, gossiped targets, and general others who are aware of gossip. Yet, previous research has typically focused on gossipers only, studying the motives of gossipers (e.g., Beersma & Van Cleef, 2012) and the consequences that gossipers suffer (e.g., Kurland & Pelled, 2000). Such a narrow focus limits our understanding of workplace gossip - and in particular, as we shall outline in this symposium - the potential functions of workplace gossip from the views of gossip recipients, gossiped targets, and/or general others. These two critical issues are systematically examined by the four theoretically-driven papers presented in this symposium. Taking the perspectives of different parties involved in gossip, the four papers present novel approaches and diversified contexts to investigate why and when gossip could be functional and beneficial. Does Gossip Accentuate or Attenuate Gossipers' Status in the Workplace? Presenter: Jie Li; Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology Presenter: Huiwen Lian; U. of Kentucky Presenter: Jingzhou Pan; Tianjin U. Negative Gossip as a Response to Supervisor Lack of Support: The moderating Role of Upward Feedback Presenter: Deshani Buddhika Ganegoda; Melbourne Business School Presenter: Maria Rotundo; U. of Toronto Presenter: Parul Acharya; Columbus State U. Perceived Gossip Prevalence in the Workplace: Implications on OCB, Work Engagement, and Well-being Presenter: Noriko Tan; National U. of Singapore Presenter: Kai Chi Yam; National U. of Singapore Presenter: Pok Man Tang; National U. of Singapore Presenter: Jingxian Yao; National U. of Singapore Dishing the Dirt: An Affective Perspective of Gossip in Dyads and Teams Presenter: Shimul Melwani; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
