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Gossip is part of everyday life and can play an important role in society. It has been part of human communication since we started to talk and is common to communities around the world. Evidence of gossip adorned the walls of ancient tombs in Egypt, and advice against gossiping can be found in the words of King Solomon in the Old Testament, in the theses of Greek philosophers, and in proverbs from all cultures. Yet gossip continues to be all around us, and most of our conversation time involves some form of it. Despite this, those who initiate gossip are often derided for being gossip mongers, and not without good reason. At its worst, gossip can destroy reputations and businesses, be used as a form of bullying, and cause a great deal of distress. In this chapter, however, I focus on why and how gossip is used and the purpose it serves in village life. Ambridge resident Susan Carter is a renowned gossip with high, unsubtle output compared to other villagers. I look at Susan's gossiping at both a psychosocial level and in terms of benefits she may gain. I also discuss gossip at the village level from two perspectives. I explore the importance of gossip to village life based upon peer reviewed literature, and relate these findings to the comings and goings of the residents of Ambridge. I then also look at how gossip is needed to relay storylines to the listeners. Finally, social media has helped to bring together Archers fans who like nothing more than to spend hours gossiping about their favourite villagers and berating Susan for her tittle-tattle. Yet The Archers wouldn't exist without gossip, so maybe we should be grateful to Susan and carry on gossiping.

Gossip is one of the reality organizations. Employees might regard gossip as a kind of information and behave based on that, thus gossip management is of great importance for effective management. In this article we investigate gossip and suggest a model for managing it.

In this paper the authors have tried to study gossip behaviors and misbehaviors and suggest solutions to manage them.

Based on the literature on gossip, the authors suggest ABC model for gossip management in organizations. In the ABC model some factors like importance, ambiguity, stress and tension, tendency to believe gossips and contrast as antecedents, making gossips, fighting gossips and spreading gossips as a strategy and other factors like mistrust, feedback, behavior modifying mechanism, information source and evaluating the employees reaction have been analyzed as the consequences of gossip.

This paper analyses intentional usage of gossips by managers to shape the intended organizational realities in light of social constructionist.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that gossip is a neglected aspect of organizational communication and knowledge, and an under-used management resource.

The paper challenges mainstream managerial assumptions that gossip is trivial or tainted talk which should be discouraged in the workplace. Instead, gossip is re-framed at an organizational level of analysis, which provides the opportunity for relational knowledge about systemic failure and poor practice in healthcare to surface.

Rather than simply viewing gossip as an individual behaviour and interpersonal process, it is claimed that organizational gossip is also a valuable early warning indicator of risk and failure in healthcare systems. There is potentially significant value in re-framing gossip as an aspect of organizational communication and knowledge. If attended to (rather than neglected or silenced) gossip can provide fresh insights into professional practice, decision making and relational leadership.

This paper offers a provocative challenge to mainstream health organization and management thinking about gossip in the workplace. It offers new ways of thinking to promote patient safety, and prevent the scandals that have plagued healthcare organizations in recent years.

The purpose of this chapter is to report on research that examined the perceptions of selected heads of Nigerian libraries about how gossip can assist in the management of libraries of all types. A survey was used to collect data from 40 heads of libraries in the south-west region of Nigeria. The questionnaire contained questions that related to the issues being investigated. The 30 responses (75%) received were processed, analyzed, and the results are presented herein. The study revealed that gossip has indeed helped library management in Nigeria. The heads of libraries reported that they derived some benefits from gossip which helped in decision making. Most respondents agreed that gossip might get out of hand, but said it should be monitored to be used as a positive tool in library management. While the study is limited to 30 libraries, it has applications to similar libraries across Nigeria, and even in other countries. This research provides a better understanding of the reasons why library managers and others should pay attention to gossip and to those behind it because of their influence. This study adds to the body of knowledge about gossip in libraries.

People are more likely to participate in work-related events that might cause positive and negative affective reactions. Prior research linked coworker friendship with incivility; however, few studies investigated negative workplace gossip. Simultaneously, linking coworker friendship with incivility through positive/negative affective responses is lacking. As such, this paper aims to examine this relationship via the dual mediation effect of positive and negative workplace gossip.

A total of 398 subordinates at family restaurants in Greater Cairo were surveyed, and data was analyzed using SmartPLS4.

Coworker friendship significantly influences coworker incivility via positive and negative workplace gossip and other underlying mechanisms.

Managers should take the initiative to decrease gossip by sharing information promptly and thoroughly and establishing effective channels for information exchange. In the case of an informal plan, restaurant managers may seek to create a welcoming and motivating corporate atmosphere and cultivate social ties among subordinates to prevent the creation of negative gossip. Restaurant managers should give victims of negative gossip timely psychological counseling.

This paper contributes to the restaurant literature on affective emotional responses to coworkers’ judgment-driven behavior from new perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between toxic workplace environments, negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding, by exploring workplace spirituality as a moderating variable in this relationship.

This study focusses on private university lecturer in West Java, Indonesia. Data collection was carried out by distributing questionnaires to respondents offline and online via Google Forms. Data analysis was done by structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings reveal that a toxic workplace environment and negative workplace gossip are positively related to knowledge hiding. In addition, it was found that workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between a toxic workplace environment and negative workplace gossip with knowledge hiding.

This study extends the research model and research context of knowledge hiding in private universities. This research contributes to the social exchange theory literature by proving empirical support to confirm that there is a social exchange in interpersonal relations between academics.

This study extends the research model and research context of knowledge hiding in private universities, linking it to the conservation of resources theory. This research contributes to the social exchange theory literature by proving empirical support to confirm that there is a social exchange in interpersonal relations between lecturers.

Leaders need to instill spirituality in lecturer so that they feel comfortable when working, and it indirectly reduces the effects of negative behavior such as negative gossip and a toxic environment that makes them willing to share knowledge.

To the authors’ understanding, this is the first study to examine workplace spirituality as a variable moderating the relationship between toxic workplace environment and negative workplace gossip with knowledge hiding in the college context.

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.

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.

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.

From the AET lens, this paper offers valuable insights into affective and emotional reactions to closest coworkers' judgmental behavior in the restaurant industry.

This study aims to explore how and when negative workplace gossip damages hospitality employees’ career growth, based on social information processing (SIP) and social cognitive career theories.

The authors gathered data from 379 individuals working in Guangzhou’s hospitality industry with a multi-wave survey.

This research found that negative workplace gossip harms career growth by damaging one’s personal reputation, and concern for reputation plays a moderating role. In particular, employees displaying greater concern for reputation are more inclined to perceive a diminished personal reputation when exposed to negative workplace gossip, resulting in more negative assessments of their career growth prospects in their organization.

This study has some practical implications. It highlights the need to mitigate negative workplace gossip by fostering a harmonious work environment, implementing reputation-focused training programs and providing support to employees who are particularly concerned about their personal reputations.

This research contributes to the knowledge by empirically revealing the career consequences of negative workplace gossip, incorporating personal reputation and concern for reputation in the theoretical model and advancing research in the vocational and gossip domains. It also enriches SIP and social cognitive career theories while focusing on the hospitality industry.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.