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This study examines the effects of workplace rumors and organizational formalization on the degree of role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion that university employees in the Philippines are experiencing during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The interaction between the two variables is also analyzed.

Online survey data were obtained from 522 faculty members and staff at three public universities in the Philippines. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results show that both workplace rumors and organizational formalization are associated positively with role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion, and role ambiguity mediates workplace rumors' effect on emotional exhaustion. Moreover, the moderating effect analysis shows that workplace rumors and organizational formalization interact and intensify the degree of role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion that employees experience.

This study extends previous research by showing that employees who work in a highly formal structure can be extremely sensitive to workplace rumors during a period of uncertainty.

Employees often engage in informal interpersonal communication within organizations. Such communication is essential for creating a better work environment. While there are documented advantages of such communication, often, such communication is plagued by rumors. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the menace posed by rumors, the motivations for employees to engage in rumormongering, and possible ways to manage the spread of these rumors.

The paper draws from published literature on rumor research to illustrate the menace of rumors within organizational contexts, motivation to engage in rumormongering, and possible management strategies.

The paper identifies the menace of rumors in organizations, illustrates the reasons why employees share rumors, and discusses the possible methods to manage the spread of rumors.

Rumor propagation in organizations is an extremely dynamic process. The key element in rumor management is the swiftness and agility in intervention and management of rumors using strategies described in this paper. HR managers can monitor conversations to identify potentially harmful rumors and tackle this menace.

This paper examines an important, albeit neglected aspect of communication in the workplace, namely, rumour and gossip in organisations. Drawing on literature from multiple disciplines the paper provides an analysis of the role played by rumour and gossip within organisations, including, but not limited to, its meaning, hidden reasons and its management. The paper discusses both antecedent and outcome variables that are associated with organisational rumour and gossip. It is contended that the different types of rumour and gossip serve different purposes which, in turn, result in a range of outcomes. Moreover, and in spite of the tendency to ascribe rumour and gossip as morally reprehensible, not all of these outcomes are shown to be harmful within organisations. The authors use this finding to argue that scholars and managers alike should avoid making negative judgements about rumour and gossip in all such cases.

Explores the issue of rumour and gossip in organisations. Given that rumour and gossip can break the harmony of the workplace unless well managed, it is rather surprising that they have not been sufficiently examined in management and organisational studies. In addition to providing an analysis of the role played by rumour and gossip within organisations, including, but not limited to, its origin, hidden reasons and its management, the role of gender is examined. Our research reveals that despite the commonly‐held and entrenched view that women are largely responsible for instigating and perpetuating organisational rumour and gossip, a review of the evidence fails to support this claim.

In the wake of a rumor outbreak, individuals exchange three types of messages: rumor messages, counter-rumor messages, and uncertainty-expressing messages. However, the properties of the three types of messages are relatively unknown particularly in the social media context. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to examine these three types of messages posted on social media in the wake of a rumor outbreak.

Data included tweets posted after the outbreak of a rumor that wrongly accused the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) for selling rats instead of chicken. Using a deductive approach, codes were derived via content analysis on the tweets. Volume and exposure of tweets were also examined.

Counter-rumor tweets (52 percent) outnumbered rumors tweets (32 percent) and uncertainty-expressing tweets (16 percent). Emotions and personal involvement were abundant in rumor tweets. Expressions of credence and references to URLs were high in counter-rumor tweets. Social ties were found widely in uncertainty-expressing tweets. The high volume and exposure of counter-rumor tweets compared with those of either rumor tweets or uncertainty-expressing tweets highlight the potential of counter-rumors to mitigate rumors.

This research ventures into a relatively unexplored territory by concurrently examining rumor messages, counter-rumor messages and uncertainty-expressing messages in the wake of a rumor outbreak. It reveals that counter-rumor messages have the potential to mitigate rumors on social media.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Leadership & Organization Development Journal is split into four sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Culture, Change and Intervention; Management Styles and Techniques; Leadership and Decision; Communications.

Rumour behaviour is an “instinctual behaviour” elicited in the workplace usually involving unverified information of uncertain origin that is transmitted by word of mouth. Examines the ways in which rumours spread and how organizations can stop them. To do so requires that practical sense be made be made of a potentially chaotic and complex set of factors which interact together to produce and elaborate rumours. With a better understanding of the nature of rumours and techniques of rumour rebuttal, organizations can prevent rumour build‐up among the staff.

The dissemination of fake news has accelerated with social media and this has important implications for both organizations and their stakeholders alike. Hence, the purpose of this study is to shed light on the effectiveness of the crisis response strategies of denial and attack in addressing rumors about consumer privacy when non-profit organizations are targeted on social media.

To test the hypotheses, a 2 (response type: denial vs attack) × 2 (privacy concerns: low vs high), between-group online experiment was conducted via Qualtrics.

The results indicated that one’s involvement level in the issue determines the effectiveness of the crisis response strategy. Data showed that attacking the source of fake news (as a crisis response) reduces the message’s credibility more than denying fake news. Furthermore, highly involved individuals are more likely to centrally process information and develop positive supportive intentions toward the affected non-profit brand. High issue involvement also predicted organizational and response credibility. Conversely, an attack rebuttal message increased the credibility of the circulated malicious rumors for low involved individuals.

The findings suggest that issue involvement plays a key role in message perceptions of false information regarding consumer privacy in social media.

Practically, this study offers insights for organizations that are developing response strategies in the current environment of fake news. Findings from this study suggest that organizations need to consider the degree to which audiences are currently involved in an issue before deciding how aggressively to respond to perpetrators of fake news.

The present study examines the intersection of fake news and crisis management in the non-profit sector, with an emphasis on various response strategies and issue involvement. This is one of the first attempts to experimentally investigate how social media strategies can defend and protect non-profit reputation in the fake news era.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of rumors' information characteristics on people's believing and spreading of rumors online.

This study employed a mixed-methods approach by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. In study 1, the authors explored different types of rumors and their information source characteristics through qualitative research. In study 2, the authors utilized the findings from study 1 to develop an empirical model to verify the impact of these characteristics on the public's behaviors of believing and spreading rumors by content analysis and quantitative research.

The results show that five information source characteristics – credibility, professionalism, attractiveness, mystery and concreteness – influence the spreading effect of different types of rumors.

This study contributes to rumor spreading research by deepening the theory of information source characteristics and adding to the emerging literature on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Insights from this research offer important practical implications for policymakers and online-platform operators by highlighting how to suppress the spread of rumors, particularly those associated with COVID-19.

This research introduces the theory of information source characteristics into the field of rumor spreading and adopts a mixed-methods approach, taking COVID-19 rumors as a typical case, which provides a unique perspective for a deeper understanding of rumor spreading's antecedences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of brand hate in detail which is the extreme negative emotion toward brands, by giving a comprehensive explanation concerning how brand hate evolves in consumers. More specifically, antecedents of brand hate are empirically assessed in this study.

This study used primary data from 250 fast food brand consumers in Pakistan. Multiple regression analysis in SPSS was used to test the hypotheses related to the antecedents of brand hate.

Results indicate that brand hate is instigated by five antecedents, which are negative past experience, symbolic incongruity, poor relationship quality, ideological incompatibility and rumor, with rumor being the biggest instigator.

Antecedents of brand hate are assessed theoretically and empirically in this study which helps in understanding the true form of brand hate. More specifically, poor relationship quality and rumor are presented as the antecedents of brand hate according to the recommendations of the theory of hate.

El objetivo de este trabajo es explorar en detalle el concepto de odio a la marca, que es la emoción negativa extrema hacia las marcas, dando una explicación completa sobre cómo evoluciona el odio a la marca en los consumidores. Más específicamente, en este estudio se evalúan empíricamente los antecedentes de odio a la marca.

Este estudio utilizó datos primarios de 250 consumidores de marcas de comida rápida en Pakistán. El análisis de regresión múltiple en SPSS se utiliza para probar las hipótesis relacionadas con los antecedentes del odio a la marca.

Los resultados indican que el odio a la marca viene motivado por cinco antecedentes que son una experiencia pasada negativa, la incongruencia simbólica, la mala calidad de la relación, la incompatibilidad ideológica y el rumor negativo, siendo el rumor el mayor antecedente.

En este estudio se evalúan teórica y empíricamente los antecedentes del odio a la marca, lo que ayuda a comprender la verdadera forma de odio a la marca. Más específicamente, la mala calidad de la relación y el rumor se presentan como los antecedentes del odio a la marca de acuerdo con las recomendaciones de la teoría del odio.

Odio a la marca, gestión de marca, relación con el cliente

Trabajo de investigación