An Integrative Definition and Framework to Study Gossip

Abstract

The omnipresence of workplace gossip makes understanding gossip processes imperative to understand social life in organizations. Although gossip research has recently increased across the social sciences, gossip is conceptualized in disparate ways in the scientific literature. This conceptual confusion impedes theoretical integration and providing practical advice. To resolve this, we systematically reviewed 6114 scientific articles on gossip and identified 324 articles that define gossip. From these definitions, we extracted two essential characteristics of gossip on which there seems to be agreement within the literature, namely, (1) that gossip is communication between humans involving a sender, a receiver, and a target, and (2) that the target is absent or unaware of the communicated content. These two characteristics formed the basis of a broad, integrative definition of gossip: a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content. Furthermore, some definitions include characteristics on which there is less agreement: gossip valence (from negative to neutral to positive) and formality (from informal to intermediate to formal). We incorporate these characteristics in a dimensional scaling framework that can guide future research. Our broad, integrative definition of gossip and the dimensional scaling framework provide the building blocks for a systematic, integrated knowledge base on the role of gossip in human social life in general as well as in organizations. This can foster future theory development and hypothesis testing, ultimately helping organizations to manage gossip.

Networks of reliable reputations and cooperation: a review

“…Reputation, however, is not necessarily available publicly or shared universally [57][58][59][60][61][62]. While individuals may observe the actions of others, reputational information in humans is often also transmitted through gossip [63][64][65][66]. Gossip allows people to sustain cooperative behaviours through the spread of negative reputation and the fear of retaliation [17], as well as through the creation of coalitions and the exercise of ostracism [16,22,25,67,68].…”

“…networks of interdependence, communication and influence are just partially overlapping gossip a sender i communicating to a receiver j about a target k who is absent or unaware of the content[66] …”

Dealing With Negative Workplace Gossip: From the Perspective of Face

“…Gossip is ubiquitous in organizations. Recently, it has been defined as "a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content" (Dores Cruz et al, 2021). Typical gossip can either be positive or negative (Brady et al, 2017).…”

Capturing Workplace Gossip as Dynamic Conversational Events: First Insights From Care Team Meetings

“…In this regard, the assumed dichotomy between positive and negative gossip has received criticism. Some scholars argue that gossip need not be evaluative at all, as long as it centers on talk about an absent target (Dores Cruz et al, 2021). Support for this view was provided by a recent naturalistic observation study.…”