Gossiping about the supervisors: antecedents and consequences of workplace gossip
Creators: name: Song, Yang
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 350507
subject: Workplace wellbeing and quality of working life
classificationCode: 350710
subject: Organisational behaviour
classificationCode: 520104
subject: Industrial and organisational psychology (incl. human factors)

description: The last two decades have witnessed increasing research interest in workplace gossip. More than malicious talk, workplace gossip can be divided into positive and negative dimensions, which significantly influence individuals, groups, and organisations. In this thesis, I explored why employees gossip positively or negatively about supervisor, and the outcomes of such behaviour on gossipers themselves. Specifically, I analysed the different impacts of servant leadership and abusive supervision on the employees’ gossiping behaviour. I also examined the explaining mechanisms of affect (emotions) and quality of leader-member relationship based on affective events theory and social exchange theory. Besides, I investigated how employees’ psychological entitlement and gossip climate of the organisation may strengthened the impacts of leadership behaviours on workplace gossip. Finally, I studied the consequences of gossiping about supervisor by examining how the supervisors may perceive and evaluate the gossiper.  

This thesis comprises three empirical studies. In Study 1, cross-sectional data were collected from 262 working employees in China from various industries to test the antecedents of workplace gossip. Results demonstrate that servant leadership facilitates positive gossip through increased positive emotions and reduces negative gossip through decreased negative emotions and increased leader-member exchange (LMX). Abusive supervision inhibits positive gossip through decreased positive emotions and leads to negative gossip through increased negative emotions and decreased LMX. In Study 2, two-wave data were collected from 210 full-time employees from various industries to explore the boundary conditions for the main relationships supported in Study 1. The results suggested that employees’ psychological entitlement enhanced the negative effect of abusive supervision on followers’ negative emotions and subsequent negative gossip. The gossip climate of an organisation also exacerbated negative gossip when employees perceived abusive supervision. However, the moderating effects were not found to be significant in the relationships between positive leadership styles and positive gossip. Study 3 explores the outcomes of gossip for gossipers themselves. Two-wave data were collected from 166 employees and 37 supervisors from three organisations in China. The results show that employee-rated gossip about supervisor can predict supervisor-perceived subordinate gossip. These perceptions could further affect the supervisor’s evaluations on the gossipers, including job performance, reward recommendation, and supervisor liking of the subordinate. Specifically, subordinates’ positive gossip can positively predict all the three supervisor-rated outcomes. Negative gossip is negatively related to those supervisor evaluations except reward recommendation.

To sum up, the three studies indicate that the causes and consequences of different types of workplace gossip are unique and contradictory. Different types of leadership behaviours can also lead to positive or negative spiral effects. In other words, servant leadership behaviour may lead subordinates to spread more positive gossip, and such positive gossip may help employees receive higher performance evaluations, more opportunities for rewards and recommendations, and quality relationships with supervisors. In contrast, abusive supervision may provoke subordinates to spread more negative gossip, which probably results in lower performance ratings and less liking by their supervisors. 

This thesis contributes to the gossip literature in three aspects. First, it distinguishes the positive and negative dimensions of gossip, exploring the antecedents and consequences of both positive and negative gossip, which enriches the connotation of workplace gossip. Second, this thesis adopts a gossiper’s perspective, which enhances the understanding of the consequences of employees' workplace gossip behaviour on themselves. Third, this thesis focuses on specific gossip targets (leaders) to explore how the antecedents and consequences of employee gossip are determined by the leaders.