Gossip as evaluative sensemaking and the concealment of confidential gossip in the everyday life of organizations

Abstract

Gossip is pervasive at the workplace, yet receives scant attention in the sensemaking literature and stands on the periphery of organization studies. We seek to reveal the non-triviality of gossip in processes of sensemaking. In drawing on empirical data from an observational study of a British Media firm, we adopt a processual perspective in showing how people produce, understand, and enact their sense of what is occurring through gossip as an evaluative and distinct form of informal communication. Our research draws attention to the importance of gossip in the routines of daily practice and the need to differentiate general from confidential gossip. We discuss how gossip continuously informs learning as evaluative sensemaking processes that encourages critiques and evaluation to shape future action and behavior. Within this, we argue how confidential gossip can challenge power relations while remaining part of formal authority structures, constituting forms of pragmatic and micro-resistance. This shadowland resistance provides terrain for learning that both criticizes and preserves espoused values and cultural norms. We conclude that confidential gossip as an evaluative and secretive process provokes a learning paradox that both enables and constrains forms of resistance in reinforcing and simultaneously questioning power relations at work.

The dialogic performativity of secrecy and transparency

“…Being certified as “needing to know” involves access to otherwise concealed knowledge. This example, which equally applies to participants in unofficial meetings or “non-meetings” mentioned previously, illustrates an inherent paradox at the core of secrecy: though insiders might be told that the secret is not to be revealed and are trusted to keep the secret, they are themselves being told the hidden information (Bellman, 1981; Fan and Dawson, 2022; Fan et al, 2017). Such a double frame is embedded in the practices of secrecy as it is communicatively organized and yet protected from communication.…”

The Ties that Bind: How Boundary Spanners Create Value in Science‐Based SMEs

“…Data analysis utilizes a grounded theory approach using first and second‐order coding to present our findings (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). These show how boundary spanners, through sensemaking processes and interactions with others (individually and collectively) (Fan and Dawson, 2022), promote the development of social capital.…”

A paradox‐constitutive perspective of organizational gossip

“…Organizational gossip sources (N = 69) (Aghbolagh et al, 2021;Babalola et al, 2019;Bai et al, 2020;Baker & Jones, 1996;Banerjee et al, 2014;Begemann et al, 2021;Ben-Hador, 2019;Bennett & Robinson, 2000;Brady et al, 2017;Burt & Knez, 1993;Carrim, 2019;Chang & Kuo, 2021;Clegg & van Iterson, 2009;Daily, 2018;Decoster et al, 2013;Dores Cruz et al, 2021;Einarsen et al, 2009;Ellwardt et al, 2012a;Ellwardt et al, 2012b;Ellwardt et al, 2012c;Fan & Dawson, 2021;Fan & Grey, 2021;Farley, 2011;Farley et al, 2010;Grosser et al, 2010;Grosser et al, 2012;Guo et al, 2021;Hafen, 2004;Hallett et al, 2009;Houmanfar & Johnson, 2003;Kim et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2021;Kniffin & Wilson, 2005Kulik et al, 2008;Kuo et al, 2015;Kuo et al, 2018;Kurland & Pelled, 2000;Lee & Barnes, 2021;Martinescu et al, 2019a;Martinescu et al, 2019b;Michelson & Mouly, 2000;Michelson & Suchitra Mouly, 2004;Michelson et al, 2010;<...…”