More than idle talk: Examining the effects of positive and negative team gossip

Abstract

Gossip is a behavior that has been traditionally viewed as harmful in organizations.However, a more balanced perspective has emerged in recent years that suggests gossip can have important benefits. We propose that one way to uncover potential benefits of gossip in teams is to focus on the valence (positive or negative nature) of the gossip. Drawing on expectancy theory, we propose that team gossip indirectly influences team performance through social loafing because it plays a key role in shaping beliefs about effort in team contexts-effects determined by team gossip valence. We hypothesize that positive team gossip decreases social loafing, whereas negative team gossip increases it. In turn, we expect that through social loafing, positive team gossip has a positive indirect effect on team performance, whereas negative team gossip has a negative indirect effect. We test these predictions in a sample of 63 self-managing teams. We find support for our predictions regarding positive team gossip but not regarding negative team gossip. Our findings point to the potential benefits of gossip and highlight why efforts to abolish gossip in organizations may impair team effort and performance.

Does bad gossiping trigger for targets to hide knowledge in morally disengaged? New multi-level insights of team relational conflict

“…Negative gossip can encourage moral disengagement based on the following three cognitive ways: devaluing targets' reputations by coworkers that shape anger; reenacting negative behavior by justifying it through moral reasoning; and obscuring or distorting the consequences of one's behaviors. Numerous scholars (Spoelma and Hetrick, 2021;Wu et al, 2018a) have highlighted that negative gossip creates negative emotional orientations and then elicits to deactivate one's effective moral attentions and efforts for organizations. According to Bandura's social learning theory (1977), affective reactions not only act as cognitive traits but also as determinants for cognitive processes to shape behaviors.…”

“…More interestingly, when employees experience negative gossip due to the unethical criticisms of gossip senders, they tend to characterize their coworkers as jealous, envious, selfish, unethical, unfair and untrustworthy (Spoelma and Hetrick, 2021), which can result in employees' enhanced moral disengagement. The enhanced moral disengagement then motivates employees to knowledge hiding by using moral justification.…”

“…In turn, emotional reactions (i.e. anger, anxiety) will be fostered by experienced negative gossip that deactivates feelings of engagement (Spoelma and Hetrick, 2021 ). Thus, coworkers’ negative gossip augments negative feelings of target employees who are more likely to disengage morally because they feel violations of moral standards.…”

Brokering or Sitting Between Two Chairs? A Group Perspective on Workplace Gossip

“…During the last few years, organization researchers have shown an increasing interest in workplace gossip ( Kniffin and Wilson, 2005 ; Michelson et al, 2010 ; Mills, 2010 ; Kong, 2018 ; Kuo et al, 2018 ; Wu et al, 2018 ; Beersma et al, 2019 ; Dores Cruz et al, 2019b ; Fan and Grey, 2020 ; Lee and Barnes, 2021 ; Spoelma and Hetrick, 2021 ; Tan et al, 2021 ; Zong et al, 2021 ). One reason for this attention lies in the acknowledgment that gossip is a behavior that can have both “bright” and “dark” effects on a firm’s dynamics ( Brady et al, 2017 ; Dores Cruz et al, 2019b ).…”

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

“…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).…”