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

Abstract

Gossip is a pervasive phenomenon in organizations causing many individuals to have second-hand information about their colleagues. However, whether it is used to inform friendship choices (i.e., friendship creation, friendship maintenance, friendship discontinuation) is not that evident. This paper articulates and empirically tests a complex contagion model to explain how gossip, through its reputational effects, can affect the evolution of friendship ties. We argue that hearing gossip from more than a single sender (and about several targets) impacts receivers’ friendships with the gossip targets. Hypotheses are tested in a two-wave sociometric panel study among 148 employees in a Dutch childcare organization. Stochastic actor-oriented models reveal positive gossip favors receiver-target friendships, whereas negative gossip inhibits them. We also find evidence supporting that, for damaging relationships, negative gossip needs to originate in more than a single sender. Positive gossip about a high number of targets discourages friendships with colleagues in general, while negative gossip about many targets produces diverging trends. Overall, the study demonstrates that second-hand information influences the evolution of expressive relations. It also underscores the need to refine and extend current theorizing concerning the multiple (and potentially competing) psychological mechanisms causing some of the observed effects.

The Breaking News Effect and Its Impact on the Credibility and Trust in Information Posted on Social Media

“…Several authors suggest that curiosity is a normal psychological trait [35,36], as individuals aim to find out potentially dangerous information about their environment in order to know how to cope with it. Moreover, according to the theories of evolutionary adeptness, individuals read sensational news in order to be integrated in their social circle and increase reproductive fitness [37,38].…”

Peeling Away the Layers of Workplace Gossip: A Framework, Review, and Future Research Agenda to Study Workplace Gossip as a Dynamic and Complex Behavior

“…Overall, our findings indicate that most studies have tended to overlook the complex and dynamic behavioral nature of the workplace gossip phenomenon. Notably, as shown in Table 2, the few studies that captured the multiple layers of workplace gossip are mostly studies that moved beyond "boxes-and-arrows" methodological approaches and adopted qualitative (e.g., [60]), mixed-methods (e.g., [35]), or network designs (e.g., [68]). Especially qualitative studies from research fields other than organizational behavior, such as ethnography or communication studies, have depicted a more holistic picture of workplace gossip that captures its complexity by considering multiple layers, as well as its dynamism by considering multiple degrees of granularity.…”

“…Combined with temporal and longitudinal data of a varying degree of granularity, network studies could provide insights into the process through which single gossip statements between close dyads result in a gossip climate at the organizational level. In their network study of the effects of receiving gossip from multiple senders about several targets on the evolution of friendship ties, Estévez et al [68] offered first inspirations for combining more than one data point of network data and applying a complex contagion model.…”