TY - JOUR
T1 - Workplace gossip
T2 - An integrative review of its antecedents, functions, and consequences
AU - Sun, Tianjun
AU - Schilpzand, Pauline
AU - Liu, Yihao
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Yue Wang and Yaojia (Rebecca) Chen for their valuable assistance during the literature search process of this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2023/2
Y1 - 2023/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - gossip antecedents
KW - gossip consequences
KW - gossip functions
KW - review
KW - workplace gossip
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U2 - 10.1002/job.2653
DO - 10.1002/job.2653
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85133156289
SN - 0894-3796
VL - 44
SP - 311
EP - 334
JO - Journal of Organizational Behavior
JF - Journal of Organizational Behavior
IS - 2
ER -