The impact of workplace gossip on newcomers’ attitudes and behaviors toward supervisors and organizations: The influence of social media use

Project Description

Gossip consists of informal and evaluative information transmitted among individuals, which can cover topics ranging from a specific targeted person to the organisation (Dunbar et al., 1997; Nevo et al., 1993). The informal information about supervisors and organisations transmitted via workplace gossip is expected to serve as a key source of information to help newcomers during their socialisation process. This research project aims to explore the impact of two forms of gossip transmission on newcomers’ attitudinal and behavioural reactions to supervisors and organisations. On one hand, newcomers proactively seek information about their supervisors and organisations through social media platforms (e.g., Meta, WeChat, REDnote). On the other hand, they are passively exposed to coworker gossip through online group chats at and off work. This research suggests that both written and verbal gossip have profound impacts on newcomers, a phenomenon that has been overlooked in managerial studies. By exploring the influence of workplace gossip (via social media platforms) on newcomers, this research advances our understanding of the role of workplace gossip in newcomer socialisation and provides unique insights to practitioners in terms of training and maintaining newcomers.

This research project is distinct from previous gossip studies in three ways. First, the focus of prior managerial studies on gossip largely addresses the negative impact of gossip and treats workplace gossip as employees’ counterproductive behaviour. This research considers gossip as a unique channel to transmit informal information to newcomers and proposes a theoretical model that depicts both positive and negative influences of workplace gossip in the context of newcomer socialisation. Second, this research explores the influence of workplace gossip via social media use. Because of the speedy development of social media, young generations are likely to seek out information about their supervisor and organisation before and after their job entry. Meanwhile, newcomers are social with their coworkers via group chat or online posts on social media to exchange information at and off work. However, current literature on gossip overlooks the exchanged information among employees via the use of social media. The research aims to examine how the transmission of gossip through social media influences newcomers’ attitudes and behaviours during organisational socialisation. Finally, how gossip influences and shapes the attitude and behaviour of newcomers is an unanswered question. Drawing from the attribution theory, the project further explores the attribution process of newcomers to examine how they make judgments on workplace gossip.

Professor WANG Siting (Department of Management, Marketing and Information Systems)

Funding/Award

Research Grants Council - General Research Fund

Creative and Media Practice

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