Article

Perceived organizational politics and workplace gossip: the moderating role of compassion

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine perceived organizational politics (POP) as an antecedent to workplace gossip. While the commonly held belief is that POP is consequential to the existence of negative workplace gossip, an alternate hypothesis can be that POP may predict positive workplace gossip as well. The study further explores the role of compassion as a boundary condition in the relationship of POP with negative and positive valences of workplace gossip. Design/methodology/approach Using purposive sampling technique, the data were collected through time-lagged (two-wave) surveys from employees working in private (Study 1, n = 366) and public (Study 2, n = 206) sector organizations across India, and analyzed using SPSS AMOS 27 and PROCESS Macro (Model 1). Findings The results of Study 1 and Study 2 revealed that POP correlated positively with negative as well as positive workplace gossip. Further, it was found that compassion moderated the relationship of POP with negative workplace gossip but failed to moderate in the case of positive workplace gossip in both the studies. Practical implications This study makes practitioners aware of the ubiquity of the phenomenon of workplace gossip and encourages them to embrace gossip in the workplace rather than banishing it altogether. Originality/value This study delineates the link between POP and the valences of workplace gossip that remains unexplored in the literature. The study also takes into account the intervening role of compassion in the aforementioned relationships. The striking results of the study open new realms of research possibilities not only in the field of workplace gossip, but POP and compassion as well.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... For instance, some employees might engage in positive workplace gossip to navigate role conflicts, enhance interpersonal relationships, and improve social standing within the workplace. Conversely, others might participate in negative workplace gossip to vent frustrations or assert perceived superiority, especially when role conflicts remain unresolved (Khan & Chaudhary, 2023). ...
... Specifically, employees in highly politicized environments may interpret illegitimate tasks as opportunities for self-promotion or conflict resolution, amplifying their tendency to engage in gossip. Moreover, POP differentiates the type of gossip: it can either highlight political opportunities, encouraging PWG, or exacerbate frustrations, leading to NWG (Khan & Chaudhary, 2023). ...
... On the other hand, POP can also serve as a strategic tool for employees, offering avenues to navigate organizational politics for personal gain (Ferris & Kacmar, 1992). While high POP may foster a hostile atmosphere conducive to NWG, it also creates opportunities for individuals to enhance their reputation and pursue career growth (Khan & Chaudhary, 2023). Employees operating under high POP may strategically engage in PWG to maintain positive evaluations within the organization and to counteract the negative effects of perceived organizational politics. ...
Article
Full-text available
The impacts of individual emotions, personality traits, and attitude characteristics on workplace gossip have been highlighted in earlier research. However, little is known about how employees’ person-job fit in the workplace influences the choice and impact of workplace gossip. On the basis of the role theory, this research examines whether perceived overqualification (POQ) is associated with two types of workplace gossip and explores the underlying mechanism of how POQ affects workplace gossip via illegitimate tasks perception. In addition, we hypothesize that perceived organizational politics (POP) serves as a critical moderator that amplifies the association. between illegitimate tasks perception and two types of workplace gossip. Specifically, with the observation of a sample of 337 employees from Chinese enterprises, we found that POQ is positively related to positive workplace gossip (PWG) and negative workplace gossip (NWG) and the perception of illegitimate tasks mediates the POQ-PWG and POQ-NWG relationships. And we also tested the role of POP and the moderated mediation model. To sum up, our findings emphasize the significance of illegitimate tasks perception as a fundamental mechanism affecting the gossip decisions of overqualified individuals.
... Politics in an organization represent machinations of personal interest that fit well with the concept of the social market (Khan & chaudhary, 2023). the perception of organizational politics depends on an individual's awareness of politics and reactions (cooper-thomas & Morrison, 2018). ...
... the perception of organizational politics depends on an individual's awareness of politics and reactions (cooper-thomas & Morrison, 2018). Organizational politics should not be understood as a concept that is only harmful and can undermine the organization's ability to operate (Khan & chaudhary, 2023). thus, managers must make decisions and implement new methods to mitigate the adverse effects of politics in the organization. ...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines the effect of training practices on job performance in the public sector of a sub-Saharan African region. Building on social cognitive theory, this study integrates the mediating role of self-efficacy and the moderating role of perceived organizational politics to explain employees’ performance in public universities. This study is a quantitative survey using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the responses of 370 non-teaching staff members at public universities in Ghana. The findings show a positive and significant relationship between training and job performance. The study also finds that self-efficacy fully mediates the effect of training on task and contextual performance but partially on adaptive performance. The study further establishes that perceived organizational politics moderate the effect of training on contextual performance but not on self-efficacy and job performance. Again, perceived organizational politics moderated the relationship between self-efficacy and job performance. Based on the findings, this study provides two key practical implications for the leadership of public institutions in general and public universities. First, the human resources divisions of various public universities must concentrate on training to enhance job performance. Second, the directorate of human resources of public universities and all public sector institutions must devise strategies to minimize organizational politics, which negatively affects overall job performance. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.
... Thus, employees who are harmed by gossip can be expected to reciprocate through revenge. Empirical research on organizational gossip has focused on the effects such as perceived organizational politics (Khan and Chaudhary, 2023), such premises as revenge, organizational citizenship behavior (Martinescu et al., 2021), organizational identity (Ye et al., 2019), job engagement and burn out (Georganta et al., 2014). However, almost no studies have examined how employees react to negative gossip. ...
... In response, employees become more likely to gossip (Houmanfar and Johnson, 2004). Empirical research has shown that organizational gossip is associated with anger and shame (Zong et al., 2023), perceived organizational politics, compassion (Khan and Chaudhary, 2023), employees' mental health and psychological capital (Cheng et al., 2023). Organizational gossip has a negative relationship with organizational identity (Xie et al., 2022) and threat to self-respect and a positive relationship with supervisor civility and psychological distress (Ye et al., 2022). ...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Supervisor incivility and organizational gossip are two examples of dark organizational behaviors. Norm of reciprocity theory suggests that employees may develop revenge intentions after exposure to such behaviors while attributing blame to others. This study aims to empirically investigate the mediating effect of blaming others on the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip on revenge intention. Design/methodology/approach Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to test the measurement model. Structural equation model was used to test the research hypotheses based on data gathered in Turkey from restaurant employees in Mersin Marina selected by convenience sampling. Data set that consists of 239 questionnaires was subjected to CFA. Findings The findings show that negative organizational gossip and supervisor incivility increase to employees’ revenge intentions, and blaming others mediates the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip no employees’ revenge intentions. In addition, blaming others mediates the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip on employees’ revenge intentions. Originality/value Empirical study has not been encountered related to dark behaviors of (especially gossip, incivility, blame and revenge intention) restaurant managers and employees as a holistic model. Therefore, this paper contributes to organizational behavior literature. Moreover, this paper suggests to restaurant managers for supply to organizational peace.
... Furthering this debate, Khan and Chaudhary (2022) investigated the relationship between perceived organizational politics and workplace gossip and found that organizational politics correlates positively with negative and positive gossip. They found that compassion moderated the relationship of organizational politics with negative gossip and further stated that the creation of a compassionate work environment might obviate some negative effects of politics. ...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: This research aims to analyze relations between workplace envy and organizational politics and emotional manipulation and the moderating role of workplace ostracism in the banking sector. Methodology: This study aims to explore the ways these elements interact in organizational settings through a sample of 270 employees working in banks. Workplace envy was positively significantly correlated with organizational politics and emotional manipulation, implicating that the greater the level of envy, the greater the engagement in political and manipulative behaviors at work. Findings: The results, however, were not supportive of the hypothesized moderating effect of workplace ostracism: the presence of ostracism, therefore, did not significantly influence the influence of envy on organizational politics and emotional manipulation. These results pointed out the enormous influence of envy in creating a negative workplace, but on the other hand, ostracism alone did not enhance these effects. Implications: This work contributes to the discovery and understanding of the emotional mechanisms in organizations and emphasizes the influence of effective leadership and management responses to address and exploit these dynamics constructively. Practical implications of the study involve interventions for developing emotional intelligence and organizational transparency in such a way as to neutralize the negative effects of envy and foster an organizational culture of support and productivity.
... Workplace gossip, a form of informal communication, naturally emerges within organizational settings (Xie et al., 2020). While both positive and negative forms of When talk matters workplace gossip exist, much of the research has predominantly focused on negative gossip, adhering to the principle that "bad holds more weight than good" (Khan and Chaudhary, 2023). Negative supervisor gossip, the act of a manager or boss speaking unfavourably about an employee in an informal setting has increasingly garnered attention as a significant issue in workplace environments (Bai et al., 2020). ...
Article
Purpose This study aims to understand the impact of negative supervisor gossip on job performance among South Indian hotel employees. The focus is not just on the direct influence, but also on the mediating role of feedback-seeking behaviour (FSB) and the moderating effects of the agreeableness trait. Design/methodology/approach Through purposive sampling, data was garnered from South Indian hotel employees. Comprehensive analyses were performed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Findings The analysis shows that FSB plays a mediating role in the positive relationship between negative supervisor gossip and job performance. In addition, the influence of gossip on FSB and subsequent job performance was more pronounced for employees with high agreeableness. Research limitations/implications This research underscores the complex interplay between negative supervisor gossip and job performance, revealing that such gossip can catalyze FSB process in employees. It suggests that under certain conditions, negative gossip can be transformed into a constructive force that enhances job performance, challenging traditional perceptions of gossip in the workplace. Practical implications The findings underscore the importance of understanding the effects of workplace dynamics, like supervisor gossip, on employee behaviour and performance. Recognizing the influence of individual personality traits, such as agreeableness, can guide management strategies for fostering a productive work environment. Originality/value This research sheds light on the intricate interplay between negative supervisor gossip, FSB and agreeableness, offering a novel perspective on their combined impact on job performance. It not only enriches the existing literature on workplace communication but also broadens the understanding of the role of personality traits in shaping employee responses and outcomes.
... By promoting a healthy and supportive work atmosphere, positive workplace gossip indirectly buffers the link between coworker friendship and coworker incivility. Positive workplace gossip encourages positive feelings, trust and respect among team members (Khan and Chaudhary, 2023). These uplifting emotional responses might contradict unfavorable attitudes and actions, which lowers the possibility of coworker incivility (Choi et al., 2023). ...
Article
Purpose Underpinned by affective events theory (AET), this paper examines the effect of coworker friendship on coworker incivility in family-style restaurants. Furthermore, this paper seeks the mediation effect of positive workplace gossip. Design/methodology/approach Using a time-lagged approach, 83 headwaiters and 326 servers at family-style restaurants located in Port Said and Ismailia responded, and their responses were analyzed using AMOS v. 24. Findings Multigroup analysis findings proved that coworker friendship increased positive workplace gossip in favor of the server sample. At the same time, the latter decreased coworker incivility in favor of the headwaiter sample. Besides, positive workplace gossip partially mediated the coworker friendship–incivility association in favor of the server sample. Furthermore, incivility levels increase between married coworkers and their peers in favor of the server sample. Originality/value From the AET lens, this paper offers valuable insights into affective and emotional reactions to closest coworkers' judgmental behavior in the restaurant industry.
... Note that, for calculating the percentages, we referred to the single studies (N = 139) instead of the (sometimes multi-study) articles. As shown in Table 1, more than half of the reviewed studies explored the consequences of workplace gossip (e.g., [66,127]), and only about a quarter of the studies examined antecedents of workplace gossip (e.g., [44,56]). Most studies used either time-lagged (e.g., [71,103]) or cross-sectional designs (e.g., [69,115]). ...
Article
Full-text available
Workplace gossip, a ubiquitous organizational behavior broadly defined as talking about an absent target in an evaluative way, has received increasing scientific attention over the past few years. The complexity and dynamism of the workplace gossip phenomenon create challenging research conditions such that studies focusing on the allegedly same type of workplace gossip can produce differential findings. To address this problem and better align theory and methodology, our manuscript first proposes a framework of workplace gossip that accounts for the interdependencies of the context-embeddedness and dynamism of workplace gossip. Guided by this framework, we systematically evaluate extant workplace gossip research, spanning a total of N = 104 empirical research articles. Highlighting current methodological challenges that indicate a neglect of the dynamic nuances and contexts of workplace gossip, we argue that previous organizational research painted an overly simplistic picture of workplace gossip. By looking beyond traditional organizational research designs, we derive recommendations to advance research on workplace gossip and, ultimately, to establish it as a complex and dynamic social interaction behavior.
Article
The present study attempts to understand and establish the interplay between workplace romance and workplace gossip through the lens o McClelland’s theory of need in the context of the Indian hospitality industry. The data were collected from 216 hotel employees using a time-lagged design. PLS-SEM was used to test the hypothesized associations. The results indicated a positive association between workplace romance and workplace gossip. The study discusses several motives for people to engage in romance, resulting in increased gossip. Workplace romance emerged as a significant mediator between the antecedents (love, loneliness, career growth, organizational politics) and the consequence (workplace gossip). There is a dearth of studies empirically studying the linkages and antecedents of workplace gossip and workplace romance, especially in the context of the Indian hospitality sector. The present study attempts to address this gap by understanding the hypothesized associations.
Article
Full-text available
Recent work on natural categories suggests a framework for conceptualizing people's knowledge about emotions. Categories of natural objects or events, including emotions, are formed as a result of repeated experiences and become organized around prototypes (Rosch, 1978); the interrelated set of emotion categories becomes organized within an abstract-to-concrete hierarchy. At the basic level of the emotion hierarchy one finds the handful of concepts (love, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and perhaps, surprise) most useful for making everyday distinctions among emotions, and these overlap substantially with the examples mentioned most readily when people are asked to name emotions (Fehr & Russell, 1984), with the emotions children learn to name first (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982), and with what theorists have called basic or primary emotions. This article reports two studies, one exploring the hierarchical organization of emotion concepts and one specifying the prototypes, or scripts, of five basic emotions, and it shows how the prototype approach might be used in the future to investigate the processing of information about emotional events, cross-cultural differences in emotion concepts, and the development of emotion knowledge.
Article
Full-text available
The workplace gossip construct is currently divergently interpreted by organizational scholars, with perceptions of its origins, functions, and impacts varying widely. In this comprehensive narrative review, we seek to provide much needed clarity around the often studied and frequently demonstrated employee behavior of workplace gossip by synthesizing gossip studies conducted during the past four decades in both the organization and psychology literatures. The first section of our review considers measures, designs, and theoretical frameworks featured in these studies. In the second section, we consolidate and integrate research findings from the extant literatures into three emerging categories of gossip antecedents (intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational antecedents), four categories of gossip functions (information exchange, ego enhancement, social integration, and social segregation), and three categories of gossip consequences (consequences for gossip senders/recipients, for gossip targets, and beyond the triads). In the last section, we propose an integrative model to guide future investigations on the antecedents, functions, and consequences of workplace gossip. Our review aims to provide a clear overview of existing gossip research across the organization and psychology literatures and to highlight several important trends to open up various opportunities for future impactful workplace gossip scholarship.
Article
Full-text available
We assess Canada's labour market policy mix in order to determine whether the inclusive growth and innovation agenda indicates that technological change has triggered a policy paradigm shift. Our analysis of four policy areas concerning labour market access indicates no paradigm shift has occurred. Instead, the agenda is an example of policy resistance: first‐ and second‐order policy changes (changes to policy settings) maintain the status quo of labour market arrangements. The result is a revised set of supply‐side policies unlikely to reorganize the labour market. Technological disruption and the COVID‐19 pandemic offer opportunities to reorganize Canada's labour market policies' current policy mix, but, even under the banner of inclusive innovation, this shift is unlikely to happen. Cet article évalue l'agencement des politiques du marché du travail canadien afin de déterminer si le programme de croissance et d'innovation inclusives indique que le changement technologique a déclenché une modification du paradigme politique. Notre analyse de quatre domaines politiques concernant l'accès au marché du travail démontre qu'aucun changement de paradigme ne s'est produit. Plutôt, le programme est un exemple de résistance politique : les changements de politiques de premier et de second ordre (changements des orientation de politiques) maintiennent le statu quo des dispositions du marché du travail. Il en résulte un ensemble révisé de politiques axées sur l'offre peu susceptible de réorganiser le marché du travail. Les perturbations technologiques et la pandémie de COVID‐19 offrent des possibilités de réorganiser l'agencement actuel des politiques du marché du travail du Canada, cependant, même sous la bannière de l'innovation inclusive, ce changement est peu susceptible de se produire.
Article
Full-text available
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.
Article
Full-text available
Work–family conflict is a subject of interest for researchers in the field of organizational behavior for decades because of its negative impact on an individual’s life. The existing literature identified that workplace stressors contribute to work–family conflict and Perceived Organizational Politics emerged as an aversive workplace stressor. From empirical pieces of evidence, it is observed that perceived organizational politics and work–family conflict are indirectly associated with each other, and their impact on employees is unavoidable. To explore this uncovered relationship, at first, this study used a keywords co-occurrence network mapping approach and found that perceived organizational politics and work–family conflict are associated with each through various workplace variables. Further, with the help of a scoping review identify those specific variables, and, lastly, a systematic review approach used to identify a mechanism of how these identified variables form an association between perceived organizational politics and work–family conflict. Based on the findings of the systematic review, this study proposed a conceptual framework that extends the existing literature by providing new insight into concepts of perceived organizational politics by linking it with work–family conflict. This study introduced a novel way to develop a conceptual framework by linking three distinct approaches of research. In the last, this study proposed recommendations for future research.
Article
Full-text available
Existing research has found that workplace negative gossip exerts a negative impact on employees and organizations. However, there is a lack of study on the spillover effect of workplace negative gossip on employees’ families. This paper aimed to address this gap in prior literature. Based on resource conservation theory, we chose married employees who perceived or suffered from workplace negative gossip as the subjects and analyzed the effect of workplace negative gossip on their work–family conflict. We adopted a self-reported questionnaire to assess employees’ perception or experience of workplace negative gossip, psychological distress, level of neuroticism, and work–family conflicts. A total of 245 valid employee questionnaires were obtained from two-wave data collection in China. The results of the empirical analysis indicated that workplace negative gossip perceived or suffered by employees has a positive impact on their work–family conflicts, and psychological distress plays a mediating role in the relationship between perceived or suffered workplace negative gossip and employees’ work–family conflict. Furthermore, we found that employees’ level of neuroticism moderates the positive effect of workplace negative gossip and work–family conflict, and it also moderates the mediating effect of workplace negative gossip on employees’ work–family conflict by psychological distress. The conclusion of this paper supported our previous hypotheses. Finally, according to the earlier findings, we discussed the theoretical contributions, practical significance, and limitations of the study and provided some practical suggestions for managers.
Article
Full-text available
Despite the ubiquity of gossip in the workplace, the management literature offers a limited understanding of its consequences for gossip senders. To understand whether gossiping is beneficial or detrimental for the gossip sender, it is necessary to consider the perspective of gossip recipients and their response to gossip. We develop a typology of gossip that characterizes archetypal patterns of interpreting gossip. We then draw from attribution theory to develop a multilevel process model of workplace gossip that focuses on how the gossip recipient's attributions of a gossip episode shape the gossip recipient's subsequent response and behaviors. In addition to the valence and work-relatedness dimensions of gossip that comprise the typology, we examine credibility and the status of the gossip target as fundamental features of the gossip episode that jointly affect the gossip recipient's attributions. At the episodic level, the process of deciphering the gossip sender's motives influences the subsequent reciprocation of gossip. Depending on the locus of causality attributed to the gossip episode, gossip also contributes to the perceived trustworthiness of the gossip sender and the gossip recipient's cooperation with or social undermining of the gossip sender over time. The proposed model suggests that the potential benefits or social consequences of gossip for the gossip sender depend on the characteristics of the gossip and the context of the gossip episode that serve as inputs to the gossip recipient's attributional process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Article
Full-text available
The relative fit of two nested models can be evaluated using a chi-square difference statistic. We evaluate the performance of five robust chi-square difference statistics in the context of confirmatory factor analysis with non-normal continuous outcomes. The mean and variance corrected difference statistics performed adequately across all conditions investigated. In contrast, the mean corrected difference statistics required larger samples for the p-values to be accurate. Sample size requirements for the mean corrected difference statistics increase as the degrees of freedom for difference testing increase. We recommend that the mean and variance corrected difference testing be used whenever possible. When performing mean corrected difference testing, we recommend that the expected information matrix is used (i.e., choice MLM), as the use of the observed information matrix (i.e., choice MLR) requires larger samples for p-values to be accurate. Supplementary materials for applied researchers to implement difference testing in their own research are provided.
Article
Full-text available
This study investigates the connection between employees’ experience of time-related work stress and their job performance, with a particular focus on the mediating role of their propensity to engage in negative gossip and the moderating role of their collectivistic orientation. The results based on multisource, three-wave data from employees, their peers, and supervisors in Pakistani organizations show that an important reason that time-related work stress might diminish job performance is that employees expend significant energy discussing their negative evaluations of other organizational members with peers, possibly as a way to protect their self-esteem resources. This mediating role of gossip is also invigorated by employees’ collectivistic orientation. For organizations, this study identifies a key mechanism – informal conversations with peers about the flaws of others in the organization – by which time-related stress prevents employees from allocating sufficient energy to completing their job tasks, and it reveals that this process is more likely among collectivistic employees.
Article
Full-text available
Background Nurses providing 24-h care for the primary caregiver role have a number of significant roles to play in potential problems or conflicts associated with patient privacy and confidentiality. Research objectives The objective of the study is to determine the prevailing attitudes towards gossip and the patient privacy practices of nurses working in paediatric units. Research design A descriptive and cross-sectional design was used. A Descriptive Characteristics Form, a Gossip and Rumour Attitude Scale and a Patient Privacy Scale were used to collect data. Participants and research context A total of 112 paediatric nurses working in Turkey were included in the study. The response rate was 79.43%. Ethical considerations Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the university’s ethics committee. The participants were informed of the aim of the study, and voluntary participation, anonymous response and confidentiality were explained to them. Findings It was observed that nurses who had a higher education level, who were educated about patient privacy and who had read the patient rights regulations were more concerned about patient privacy. Negative correlations were found between the attitudes towards gossiping and the average scores on the patient confidentiality scale. Nurses who negatively defined gossip were more concerned about patient confidentiality. Discussion Privacy is important for securing and protecting the personal, physical and psychological things that are important and special for patients. It is argued that obstacles to maintaining the privacy of hospitalized children and adolescents are a tolerant attitude towards gossiping, a lack of education about patient privacy and insufficient information about patient’s rights regulations and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Conclusion A nurse’s knowledge about the provision of patient confidentiality affects their privacy practices. For this reason, regular training sessions are recommended in hospitals.
Article
Full-text available
Although calls for pay transparency in the workplace are growing, it remains unclear which factors determine when and why employees exchange pay information. We use a social comparison theory lens to identify the pay transparency dilemma, wherein pay information exchange can create benefits by reducing uncertainty and verifying equitable pay, but simultaneously risks straining interpersonal relationships and damaging reputations. To examine individual differences in employee sensitivity to the risks and benefits presented in this dilemma, our research develops a measure of pay information exchange preferences with two facets: information sharing preferences and information seeking preferences. Across eight samples, we present evidence that supports the content, construct, and criterion validity of these measures. Overall, these findings support the idea that social comparison processes play a key role in shaping employee pay information exchange preferences and behaviors. This new instrument has the potential to catalyze future theoretical development and research to aid practitioners in making evidence-based decisions about pay communication policies.
Article
Full-text available
Negative workplace gossip generates social undermining and great side effects to employees. But, the damage of negative gossip is mainly aimed at the employee who perceived being targeted. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model in which perceived negative workplace gossip influences employees in-role behavior and organizational citizenship behavior differentially by changing employees’ self-concept (organizational-based self-esteem and perceived insider status). 336 employees from seven Chinese companies were investigated for empirical analysis on proposed hypotheses, and results show that: (1) Perceived negative workplace gossip adversely influences employees’ IRB and OCB. (2) Self-concept (OBSE and PIS) plays a mediating role in the relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and employees’ behaviors (IRB and OCB). (3) Employees’ hostile attribution bias moderates the relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and self-concept (OBSE and PIS); and also moderates the mediating effect of self-concept (OBSE and PIS) on the relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and employees’ behaviors (IRB and OCB). Thus, our findings provide deeper insights into the potential harmful effects of gossip. In addition, we help to explain the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of these effects.
Article
Full-text available
From an evolutionary perspective, gossip has been considered a putative intrasexual competition strategy that is used to vie for mates and resources linked to reproductive success. To date, no study has directly examined the relations between intrasexual competitiveness, reported tendency to gossip, and attitudes toward gossiping. Limited empirical work has also focused on whether gossip frequency, gossip content, and gossip attitudes correspond to women’s and men’s divergent intrasexual competition strategies and evolved mating preferences. In a sample of 290 heterosexual young adults, we found that intrasexual competition positively predicted reported gossip frequency and favorable attitudes toward gossiping. Additionally, women reported a greater tendency to gossip in comparison to men, particularly about physical appearance and social information, whereas men reported gossiping more about achievement. Women also reported greater enjoyment of, and perceived more value in, gossiping than men. Collectively, these findings provide empirical support for the hypothesis that gossip is an intrasexual competition tactic that, by and large, corresponds to women’s and men’s evolved mate preferences and differential mate competition strategies.
Article
Full-text available
This study examined the relationship between variables that represent organizational justice and fairness and counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). It is contended that breach of psychological contracts and affective organizational commitment mediate this relationship. Questionnaires were distributed to 270 teachers in 10 high schools located in the north of Israel; 210 usable questionnaires were returned. One of the important results of this study is the relationship of burnout to the two dimensions of CWBs (interpersonal and organizational). Job burnout was found to be positively and strongly related (based on very high coefficients) to both dimensions. While we did predict that burnout would be related to CWBs, the strength of this relationship was not expected. The findings also show no effect of organizational justice and some effect of perceptions of organizational politics. Psychological contract breach was found to be related to interpersonal but not organizational CWBs. The proposed mediation relationships are partially supported. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research on this issue and notes the practical implications of the findings.
Article
Full-text available
Despite decades of research from other academic fields arguing that gossip is an important and potentially functional behavior, organizational research has largely assumed that gossip is malicious talk. This has resulted in the proliferation of gossip items in deviance scales, effectively subsuming workplace gossip research into deviance research. In this paper, the authors argue that organizational research has traditionally considered only a very narrow subset of workplace gossip, focusing almost exclusively on extreme negative cases which are not reflective of typical workplace gossip behavior. Instead of being primarily malicious, typical workplace gossip can be either positive or negative in nature and may serve important functions. It is therefore recommended that workplace gossip be studied on its own, independent of deviance. To facilitate this, the authors reconceptualize the workplace gossip construct and then develop a series of general-purpose English- and Chinese-language workplace gossip scales. Using 8 samples (including qualitative, multisource, multiwave, and multicultural data), the authors demonstrate the construct validity, reliability, cross-cultural measurement invariance, and acceptable psychometric properties of the workplace gossip scales. Relationships are demonstrated between workplace gossip and a variety of other organizational variables and processes, including uncertainty, emotion validation, self-esteem, norm enforcement, networking, influence, organizational justice, performance, deviance, and turnover. Future directions in workplace gossip research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
Article
Full-text available
Three hypotheses about the effects of different informal social network structures on gossip behavior are developed and tested. Gossip is defined as a conversation about a third person who is not participating in the conversation. Having analyzed the costs and benefits of gossip, we prefer the coalition hypothesis. It states that gossip will flourish in social networks that have a relatively large number of coalition triads, that is ego and alter having a good relationship amongst themselves and both having a bad relationship with tertius, the object of gossip. Two rivalling hypotheses are developed. The constraint hypothesis predicts that the inclination towards gossip is greater, the larger the number of structural holes in the personal network of the gossipmonger. The closure hypothesis predicts that more gossip will be found in networks with a large number of closed triads, that is where both gossipmonger and listener have a good relationship with the absent third person. The hypotheses are tested using a newly developed instrument to measure gossip behavior and network data from six work organizations and six school classes. The data support the coalition hypothesis and do not support the two rivalling hypotheses.
Article
Purpose Although many probable consequences of workplace gossip have been featured prominently in the organizational behavior literature, existing research lags in identifying the possible causes behind it. In the present research, the authors aim to examine self-focused personality traits such as narcissism and core self-evaluation (CSE) as predictors of negative (NWG) and positive workplace gossip (PWG). In addition, the study tests the moderating influence of perceived organizational politics (POP) on the aforementioned relationships. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a time lagged field study on a sample of 616 employees from various organizations across India. The proposed theoretical model was tested using structural equation modeling procedures in AMOS. Findings Narcissism was found to relate significantly with NWG as well as PWG. CSE, on the other hand, showed significant association with NWG only. Further, POP was found to moderate the relationship between narcissism and PWG. Practical implications Present study makes practitioners aware of the ubiquity of the phenomenon of gossip and encourages them to design and implement policies that cater to the needs of communication of employees. It also advises managers to carefully examine political scenario in the organization, and understand how it can be moulded for the betterment of employees as well as the organization. Originality/value First, using social comparison theory, the authors introduce personality traits as predictors of NWG and PWG. Second, by exploring POP as the boundary condition, the authors take into account the most common yet unexplored factor that affects gossip behavior in the organizations.
Article
The potentially destructive effects of informal communication in the form of negative workplace gossip have recently attracted scholars’ interest. Beyond the perspectives of prior studies (e.g., the conservation of resources (COR) and self-consistency theories), we offer a new account based on social identity theory and propose that negative workplace gossip is related to target employees’ decreased organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by undermining their identification with the organization. We also theorize that collectivism influences the extent to which employees identify with the organization when being targeted by negative gossip. By collecting three-wave supervisor–subordinate dyadic data from China, we demonstrated that organizational identification mediates the negative relationship between negative workplace gossip and OCB when the effects of other mediators studied by previous perspectives (i.e., organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and emotional exhaustion) were controlled. In addition, we found that collectivism moderates the indirect effect of negative workplace gossip on OCB through organizational identification.
Article
The Problem Policies on employee leave and flexible workplace arrangements have not met the needs of employees in achieving work-life balance. Even when such policies do exist, employers are largely unable to actualize the benefits of these policies. These challenges have been exacerbated by the global pandemic creating more demand for work-life flexibility practices. The Solution Organizations must engage in a paradigm and cultural shift to achieve the benefits of work-life policies and practices. An organizational culture that moves beyond a human resource management (HRM) lens of administration and compliance to a human resource development (HRD) lens of support and development is central to overcoming this challenge. The Stakeholders Stakeholders for this concluding article include executive leaders of organizations, HRD and HRM scholars and practitioners.
Book
In previous years, philosophers have either ignored the virtue of humility or found it to be in need of radical redefinition. But humility is a central human virtue, and it is the purpose of this book to defend that claim from a Kantian point of view. Jeanine Grenberg argues that we can indeed speak of Aristotelian-style, but still deeply Kantian, virtuous character traits. She proposes moving from focus on action to focus on person, not leaving the former behind, but instead taking it up within a larger, more satisfying Kantian moral theory. Using examples from literature as well as philosophy, she shows that there is a Kantian virtue theory to be explored in which humility plays a central role. Her book will have a wide appeal to readers not only in Kant studies but also in theological ethics and moral psychology.
Article
Purpose The crucial role of knowledge sharing in an organization has become even more crucial lately, resulting in garnering more attention by scholars. In reality, while several organizations expect their employees to share knowledge with colleagues actively, many choose to hide their knowledge when asked for help. This study aims to explore whether negative workplace gossip (NWG) affects employee knowledge hiding (KH), as well as analyzes whether relational identification (RI) and interpersonal trust (IT) play a chain mediating role between the two, and discusses whether forgiveness climate (FC) could be used as a boundary condition in the relationships mentioned above. Design/methodology/approach Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory and the cognitive–affective personality system (CAPS) theory, the authors surveyed 326 employees in China at 2 time-points and explored the correlation between NWG and KH, as well as the underlying mechanism. Using confirmatory factor analysis, bootstrapping method and structural equation model, the authors validated the research hypotheses. Findings The findings revealed the following: NWG negatively correlates with KH; RI and IT play a mediation role between NWG and KH, respectively, and both variables also play a chain mediation role in the relationship mentioned above; and FC moderates the negative impact of NWG on RI, further moderating the chain mediation between RI and IT and between NWG and KH. Originality/value First, this study established the correlation between NWG and KH, as well as analyzed the internal mechanism between the two. Besides, this study adds to scholars’ understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which these effects could occur. Second, this study demonstrated the moderating effect of FC – a situational feature that has been neglected in previous studies. Furthermore, this study can not only complement the situational factors ignored in previous studies but also broaden the application scope of CAPS. Finally, this study effectively combines COR and CAPS, which provides a basis for the application of these two theories in the future.
Article
Drawing upon affective events theory, the authors propose that the subordinates’ negative gossip acts as a targeting affective event which leads to supervisor negative emotions. In turn, such negative emotions provoke supervisors to exhibit abusive behavior toward their subordinates. Additionally, the authors propose that an affective dispositional factor, namely, supervisor emotional regulation, moderates the hypothesized relationships. Using multisource data and a moderated-mediation model, the authors find that the supervisor’s perception of the subordinates’ negative workplace gossip is associated with abusive supervision through the supervisor’s negative emotions. Moreover, the supervisor’s emotional regulation mitigates the relationship between such negative gossip and the supervisor’s negative emotions. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Data were collected from employees (e.g. subordinates) and their immediate supervisors in organizations representing a variety of industries (e.g. finance, health care, information technology, public safety and human services) located in three cities in China. Respondents were recruited from different professional online forums with the offer of free movie tickets in return for participation. Using multisource data and a moderated-mediation model, the authors find that the supervisor’ s perception of the subordinates ’ negative workplace gossip is associated with abusive supervision through the supervisor’ s negative emotions. Moreover, the supervisor ’s emotional regulation mitigates the relationship between such negative gossip and the supervisor’ s negative emotions, but not the relationship between the supervisor’ s negative emotions and abusive supervision. Like all studies, the current one is not without limitations. First, the data were collected using a cross-sectional research design, which limits the interference of causality among the hypothesized relationships in the model. Future research work should apply alternative research designs such as a daily diary or longitudinal data collection (Shadish et al., 2002), in order to support the validity of the study. In practical terms, abusive supervision is recognized as a destructive workplace behavior that is costly to organizations ( Mackey et al., 2017; Martinko et al., 2013). Thus, it is important for organizational management and practitioners to understand the reasons why supervisors exhibit abusive behavior toward subordinates. Through this study, higher management must understand harmful effects of subordinates’ workplace negative gossip, it must be recognized as other types of workplace mistreatment (rudeness and incivility), establishment and enforcement of the code of conduct can prevent negative workplace gossip prevalence in the workplace.
Article
Positive organizational scholarship has led to a growing interest in the critical role of positive emotions for the lives of both workers and organizations. We review and integrate the different perspectives on positive emotions (i.e., positive valence, positive emotion regulation strategies, and positive adaptive function) and the four main mechanisms (i.e., cognition, affect, behavior, and physiology) that lead to positive organizational outcomes. There is growing evidence that positive emotions influence variables vital for workplace success such as positive beliefs, creativity, work engagement, positive coping, health, teamwork and collaboration, customer satisfaction, leadership, and performance. We additionally review dynamic features of positive emotions (i.e., intraindividual variability, reactivity, inertia, cycles, feedback loops) and their relation to psychological and work outcomes. Finally, we discuss additional questions and future directions for consideration. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 7 is January 21, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Article
Applying social identity theory, this study investigates the relationship between negative workplace gossip and hospitality employee service outcomes of service performance and customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by examining organizational identification as a mediator and hostile attribution bias as a moderator. The results from a survey of 574 supervisor–subordinate dyads in 10 Chinese hotels indicate that negative workplace gossip impairs hospitality employees’ service performance and customer-oriented OCB through undermining their organizational identification. Moreover, hostile attribution bias exaggerates the direct impact of negative workplace gossip on organizational identification and the indirect impacts of negative workplace gossip on the two service outcomes via organizational identification. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Article
This study investigates why and when perceived negative workplace gossip inhibits targets’ in-role performance in the context of service. Relying on affective events theory, we argue that perceived negative workplace gossip inhibits targets’ customer service performance by eliciting negative mood. Furthermore, we argue that this mediating process is moderated by targets’ trait mindfulness and forgiveness. Specifically, we suggest that target employees who are lower (versus higher) in trait mindfulness are more likely to experience negative mood. In turn, the negative mood only inhibits customer service performance among those who have lower (versus higher) tendency to forgive. Results from a multi-wave, multisource field study provide support for our hypotheses, even while controlling for targets’ emotional exhaustion as an alternative pathway. These findings support the affective events perspective to understand negative workplace gossip and provide a more nuanced view on its consequences.
Article
Although laypeople often view gossipers as immoral, uneducated, typically female, and of lower social class, no systematic observation has empirically revealed the characteristics of those who gossip more than others nor examined the characteristics of gossip across everyday contexts. We used data from five naturalistic observation studies (N = 467) to examine who gossips and how. All participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which acoustically sampled 5–12% over 2–5 days, and completed demographics and personality questionnaires. Sound files were coded for gossip, valence (positive, negative, and neutral), subject (acquaintance and celebrity), and topic (social information, physical appearance, and achievement). Frequent gossipers tended to be more extraverted. Women engaged in more neutral gossip than men, and younger people tended to negatively gossip more than older people. Gossip tended to be neutral, rather than positive or negative, and about social information. These naturalistic observation findings dispel some stereotypes about this prevalent yet misunderstood behavior.
Article
Gossip is a ubiquitous phenomenon found in organisational life but has been under-researched within organisational literature. Our study elaborates on the multidimensional nature of workplace gossip in terms of valence (i.e., positive and negative) and targets (i.e., supervisors and organisations). We derive perceived justice and insider status as an antecedent and boundary condition of workplace gossip from social exchange theory. Our analysis of data collected from 329 nurses largely supports our hypothesised relationships between organisation-initiated (i.e., procedural and distributive) justice and gossip about the organisation, as well as between supervisor-initiated (i.e., interpersonal and informational) justice and gossip about the supervisor. With the exception of distributive justice, our work indicates the moderating effects of perceived insider status on the positive linkages between justice perceptions and positive gossip behaviours. Our findings provide theoretical implications for the gossip patterns across gossip triggers and gossipers and offer practical guidelines for effectively managing workplace gossip.
Article
Organizational politics has been an oft-studied phenomenon for nearly four decades. Prior reviews have described research in this stream as aligning with one of three categories: perceptions of organizational politics (POPs), political behavior, or political skill. We suggest that because these categories are at the construct level research on organizational politics has been artificially constrained. Thus, we suggest a new framework with higher-level categories within which to classify organizational politics research: political characteristics, political actions, and political outcomes. We then provide a broad review of the literature applicable to these new categories and discuss the possibilities for future research within each expanded category. Finally, we close with a discussion of future directions for organizational politics research across the categories. The full article can be found at: http://www.annualreviews.org/eprint/Ibk4Ugg76fRW6hd5CExn/full/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015221
Article
Several issues relating to goodness of fit in structural equations are examined. The convergence and differentiation criteria, as applied by Bagozzi, are shown not to stand up under mathematical or statistical analysis. The authors argue that the choice of interpretative statistic must be based on the research objective. They demonstrate that when this is done the Fornell-Larcker testing system is internally consistent and that it conforms to the rules of correspondence for relating data to abstract variables.
Article
Scholars have largely focused on the negative consequences of organisational politics for employees' performance. In contrast, we maintain that organisational politics has positive aspects and moderates the relationship between employee engagement and behaviors at work such as knowledge sharing, creativity, proactivity, and adaptivity. Using data from 253 high-tech employees and their supervisors in Israel, our findings demonstrate that perceptions of organisational politics strengthen the relationship between employee engagement and these behaviors. When engaged employees perceive their workplace to be political, they are more proactive, creative, and adaptive, and more likely to share their knowledge with their peers. These findings confirm the challenge/opportunity stressor theory regarding perceptions of organisational politics and suggest that whether politics is viewed as positive or negative depends on the employees' point of view. For those who are engaged and more actively involved in their jobs, politics can be regarded as a challenge and even an opportunity for obtaining more resources to improve their performance. Implications for the development of theory and practice in this area are discussed.
Article
Providing evaluative information to others about absent third parties helps them to identify cooperators and avoid cheaters. Here, we show that 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, reliably engage in such prosocial gossip. In an experimental setting, 5-year-old children spontaneously offered relevant reputational information to guide a peer towards a cooperative partner. Three-year-old children offered such evaluative information only rarely, although they still showed a willingness to inform in a non-evaluative manner. A follow-up study revealed that one component involved in this age difference is children's developing ability to provide justifications. The current results extend previous work on young children's tendency to manage their own reputation by showing that preschoolers also influence others' reputations via gossip.
Article
We present and test a self-consistency theory framework for gossip: that perceived negative workplace gossip influences our self-perceptions and, in turn, this influences our behaviors. Using supervisor-subordinate dyadic time-lagged data (n = 403), we demonstrated that perceived negative workplace gossip adversely influenced target employees’ organization-based self-esteem, which, in turn, influenced their citizenship behavior directed at the organization and at its members. Moreover, by integrating victimization theory into our framework, we further demonstrated that negative affectivity, an individual’s dispositional tendency, not only moderated the self-consistency process but also predicted perceived negative workplace gossip. Our study therefore shifts attention to the target of negative workplace gossip and in doing so offers a promising new direction for future research. Implications to theory and practice are discussed.
Conference Paper
Article
Using social exchange theory, we propose a three-way interaction of despotic leadership, leader member exchange (LMX), and perceived organizational politics (POP) to predict employee job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), and creativity. Using two-source field data (N = 480) with independent measures for predictors (self-reports) and outcomes (peer-reports), we tested our hypotheses using moderated regression analyses. The results indicate that despotic leadership is negatively related to the three employee outcomes, and that the effects are stronger under conditions of high LMX or high POP. A three-way interaction suggests that the negative relationship between despotic leadership and the three dependent variables is strongest when both LMX and POP are high. Our study addresses an important and unexplored area of the dark side of leadership and its interplay with perceived politics and LMX to better predict important outcomes in a new cultural setting.
Article
Examples from previously published work by the lead author on the role of employee health indicators on individual and organizational outcomes provide an intriguing backdrop through the use of illustration for suggesting some of the many benefits obtained by the incorporation of replication, extension, and mixed-methods study designs in organizational research.
Article
We propose that employees’ perceptions of intra-organizational cues are an important factor influencing their identification with their organizations. Building on self-categorization theory, we examine whether perceived organizational support influences organizational identification. We contend that in addition to the mediating effect of affective commitment, organizational identification also mediates the effect of perceived organizational support on employees’ extra-role behavior. We collect perceptions of perceived organizational support, organizational identification and extra-role behavior information from 363 nurses in China using a three-wave data collection method and find empirical evidence to support most of our hypotheses. We find that collectivism moderates the indirect effect of perceived organizational support on extra-role behavior through organizational identification. We discuss the implications of our findings.
Article
Purpose – The current paper aims to argue that it is important for conflict management research to start focusing on leader–follower conflict as a “special case” of conflict because the relationship between leaders and followers is, by definition, characterized by divergence of interest and, second, because it is asymmetric in terms of power and vulnerability. Moreover, it is argued that conflict management research should start to examine the various behaviors that people engage in as a response to conflict, in a broader sense, than has been done until now. Research on conflict management increasingly recognizes the significance of interpersonal relations in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach – As a case in point, a survey study among 97 Dutch police officers is presented. Leaders’ conflict management behaviors as assessed by followers is measured. In addition, followers’ experienced interactional justice and the extent to which they indicated that they would engage in negative and/or positive gossip about their leader was measured. Findings – Results demonstrate that more forcing and avoiding leader conflict management behavior was related to more negative and less positive gossip about leaders. Moreover, more problem-solving and yielding leader conflict management behavior was related to less negative and more positive gossip. All relationships between leader conflict management behavior and follower gossip were mediated by followers’ experienced interactional justice. Originality/value – It is hoped that the findings put research on the broader implications of interactional justice in leader–follower interactions, and on gossip, on the research agenda of conflict researchers.
Article
Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.
Article
THE functions served, the motivations at work, and the psychological mechanisms employed in gossip are varied and multiple and may be beneficent or malevolent in nature. Gossip, or an equivalent, appears to be common to all mankind. In its news-bearing aspects, gossip serves a useful purpose in communicating information. It is also a means of passing time, and, as chit-chat, it offers a means of recreation and tends to solidify group-member identification.