José Luis Estévez

Väestöliitto

Gossip is universal, and multiple studies have demonstrated that it can have beneficial group-level outcomes when negative reports help identify defectors or norm-violators. Gossip, however, seldom happens in a social vacuum. Instead, it is enmeshed in a fabric of positive and negative relationships that creates opportunities, constraints, and also...

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 contag...

Brokerage is a central concept in the organization literature. It has been argued that individuals in broker positions-i.e., connecting otherwise disconnected parts within a firm's social network-can control the flow of information. It would imply their increased relevance in workplace gossip. This allegation, however, has not been addressed empiri...

Gossip constitutes a form of human communication consisting of the transmission of evaluative information about absent others. Previous research has associated the usage of gossip with outcomes at both the individual and the group levels. Such outcomes include, among other things, the delimitation of group boundaries, the ostracism of wrong-doers,...

Complex contagion theory is used to develop novel hypotheses on the effects of workplace gossip on expressive relations. It is argued that hearing gossip from multiple senders or about multiple targets impacts receivers’ friendships with gossip targets. Hypotheses are tested in a two-wave sociometric panel study among 148 employees of three units i...

"Modern evaluation" constitutes one of the fundamental institutions of our time. Within it, the concept of stakeholder currently holds a core place. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the path the concept has undergone within the discipline, as well as the reasons which has led to its "normalisation". In both the literature on evaluation as...