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Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this paper aims to explore the potential influence of perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip on abusive supervision in China. Moreover, the COR theory helps in examining the mediating role of self-esteem threat and psychological distress and the moderating role of mindfulness on the effects of perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip on abusive supervision.

Data was collected from 305 supervisor-subordinate dyads in China using the time-lagged and multi-source methods and hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyze the data.

Results reveal that perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip is positively related to abusive supervision and the relationship is moderated by the supervisor’s traits of mindfulness. In addition, perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip has an indirect effect on abusive supervision via self-esteem threat (cognition) and psychological distress (emotion).

The study helps to understand the influence of perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip on abusive supervision based on the COR theory. At the same time, it also enriches the understanding of the internal mechanism between perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip and abusive supervision.

Drawing upon affective events theory, the authors propose that the subordinates’ negative gossip acts as a targeting affective event which leads to supervisor negative emotions. In turn, such negative emotions provoke supervisors to exhibit abusive behavior toward their subordinates. Additionally, the authors propose that an affective dispositional factor, namely, supervisor emotional regulation, moderates the hypothesized relationships. Using multisource data and a moderated-mediation model, the authors find that the supervisor’s perception of the subordinates’ negative workplace gossip is associated with abusive supervision through the supervisor’s negative emotions. Moreover, the supervisor’s emotional regulation mitigates the relationship between such negative gossip and the supervisor’s negative emotions. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Data were collected from employees (e.g. subordinates) and their immediate supervisors in organizations representing a variety of industries (e.g. finance, health care, information technology, public safety and human services) located in three cities in China. Respondents were recruited from different professional online forums with the offer of free movie tickets in return for participation.

Using multisource data and a moderated-mediation model, the authors find that the supervisor’s perception of the subordinates’ negative workplace gossip is associated with abusive supervision through the supervisor’s negative emotions. Moreover, the supervisor’s emotional regulation mitigates the relationship between such negative gossip and the supervisor’s negative emotions, but not the relationship between the supervisor’s negative emotions and abusive supervision.

Like all studies, the current one is not without limitations. First, the data were collected using a cross-sectional research design, which limits the interference of causality among the hypothesized relationships in the model. Future research work should apply alternative research designs such as a daily diary or longitudinal data collection (Shadish et al., 2002), in order to support the validity of the study.

In practical terms, abusive supervision is recognized as a destructive workplace behavior that is costly to organizations (Mackey et al., 2017; Martinko et al., 2013). Thus, it is important for organizational management and practitioners to understand the reasons why supervisors exhibit abusive behavior toward subordinates.

Through this study, higher management must understand harmful effects of subordinates’ workplace negative gossip, it must be recognized as other types of workplace mistreatment (rudeness and incivility), establishment and enforcement of the code of conduct can prevent negative workplace gossip prevalence in the workplace.

This study has contributed to the organizational behavior literature in several aspects. First, most studies have examined the consequences of abusive supervisor through subordinates victimization, current study contributes in the ongoing stream of research by examining antecedents of abusive supervision through subordinates’ social victimization (e.g. negative workplace gossip) of supervisors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of supervisor gossip in the workplace. This paper proposes a hypothetical model in which supervisor gossip has an effect on leader-member exchange (LMX), in turn resulting in perceived supervisor ostracism among subordinates.

A dyadic research design was applied to collect data from Taiwanese employees. Supervisors participated in a survey containing measures of supervisor gossip and control variables, whereas subordinates responded to a questionnaire on LMX, perceived supervisor ostracism, and control variables.

The results indicated that positive supervisor gossip significantly affected LMX. Furthermore, healthy LMX reduced subordinates’ perceptions of supervisor ostracism.

All participants were recruited in Taiwan, which is a limitation for generalising the research findings. Future studies should investigate multiple societies of various cultural profiles.

To improve the quality of the supervisor-subordinate relationship, supervisors should adopt a positive informal communication style, and organisations should provide supervisors with information regarding the implications of workplace gossip, illustrating the substantial benefits of positive gossip and the potential drawbacks of negative gossip.

The present study highlighted the role of supervisor workplace gossip in the field of leadership and empirically investigated the impact of supervisor gossip on subordinates’ reactions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the curvilinear relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and target employee’s task performance, and the moderating roles of perceived organizational support (POS).

Using a sample of 275 supervisor–subordinate dyads in a two-wave survey, the authors adopted a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that there is a U-shaped relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and task performance. Moreover, POS moderated the curvilinear relationship such that the curvilinear relationship is more pronounced among those with lower POS.

This study does not explore the mediating mechanism of how perceived negative gossip affects the target’s task performance. Moreover, as this research was conducted in a Chinese context, the question of the generalizability of the findings calls for more attention.

When the negative gossip is still in its early stages, managers should realize the potential threat to target employees and take measures to stop and minimize negative gossiping and rumormongering. Furthermore, managers should do their best to find the optimal levels of organizational support for target employees.

This study is among the first effort to understand how perceived negative gossip can influence the target employees’ performance by proposing and demonstrating a nonlinear relationship. Moreover, by illuminating how POS plays a role in the curvilinear relationship between negative gossip and task performance, the authors not only complement but also extend the literature on workplace gossip and organizational support.

Based on revenge theory and the three objectives of social interaction theory of aggression, the purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to answer why and when a subordinate’s own behaviour instigates abuse at the workplace. In particular, the authors argue that subordinate gossip behaviour instils in supervisors a thought of revenge towards that subordinate, which, in turn, leads to abusive supervision. Specifically, this hypothesised relationship is augmented when the supervisor feels close to the gossiper (i.e. psychological proximity).

The authors conducted two independent studies to test the moderated mediation model, which collectively investigate why and when subordinate gossip behaviour provokes abusive supervision in the workplace. A lagged study (i.e. Study 1: 422 supervisors and subordinates) in a large retail company and an experience sampling study (i.e. Study 2: 96 supervisors and subordinates with 480 daily surveys) in multiple organisations provide support for the moderated mediation model.

The two-study (i.e. a lagged study and an experience sampling study) findings support the integrated model, which has mainly focussed on instrumental consideration of abusive supervision that influences the supervisor–subordinate relationship.

The two-study investigation has important and meaningful implications for abusive supervision research because it determines that subordinate gossip behaviour is more threating to a supervisor when the subordinate and the supervisor are psychological close to each other than when they are not. That is because when they are close, the supervisor is not expecting gossip behaviour from the subordinate, thus giving rise to an abusive workplace.

In this paper, the impact of customer incivility on work engagement was investigated. The authors also explored whether supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence moderated the impact of customer incivility on work engagement in the Nigerian context.

The authors used a time-lagged design to collect data from 258 frontline casual dining restaurant employees across city centers in South-eastern Nigeria who completed Time 1 and Time 2 paper surveys after a one-month interval.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that while customer incivility was negatively lx`inked to work engagement, supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence were positively linked to work engagement. It was also found that both supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence moderated the negative connection between customer incivility and work engagement.

One proactive way to forestall the negative impact of customer incivility on work engagement is for managers to devise approaches to decrease the impact of uncivil customer behaviors, such as developing an atmosphere that engenders friendship and speaking positively to subordinates about other employees' work behaviors.

Although increased scholarly attention has been paid to workplace incivility, customer incivility has not been sufficiently addressed. Earlier research on workplace gossip is influenced by the widely-held belief that gossip is often negative, with far less attention given to the sunny side of gossip. This study is one of the earliest efforts to examine the moderating roles of supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence in the negative link between customer incivility and work engagement in the hospitality industry.

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.

Extant scholars identified negative workplace gossip as a social stressor that negatively influences employees’ behavior and attitude. Despite the burgeoning interest in workplace stressors, limited studies have explored how the detrimental consequences of targets’ perceived negative workplace gossip spur their emotions and behaviors. Grounding on conservation of resources and ego depletion theories, this study aims to investigate why and how targets’ negative workplace gossip may contribute to trigger knowledge hiding. Specifically, the authors explore the underlying mechanism of personal ego depletion and boundary conditions of organizational justice to shed new light on the above process.

Using two time-wave survey, the authors collected 340 sample data from employees working in high-tech companies of China. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine hypothesized relationships of moderated mediation model.

The empirical results revealed that negative workplace gossip exacerbates knowledge hiding by increasing personal ego depletion. Furthermore, through testing moderated mediation model, the results showed that organizational justice (i.e. distributive and procedural justice) with the low presence moderates the stronger strength of the linkage between negative workplace gossip and personal ego depletion, and likewise, it also moderates the stronger effect of negative workplace gossip on knowledge hiding via personal ego depletion.

This study recommends several guidelines for managers and practitioners to mitigate negative gossip by strengthening organizational justice.

This study first enriches novel understanding in the literature between negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding by using a new emotional mechanism (i.e. personal ego depletion). This research also contributes new insights by incorporating contextual boundary conditions (i.e. organizational justice) that have not been yet researched on negative gossip and knowledge hiding linkage.

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.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander behavior based on the perspective of bystander from two different paths of bystander empathy and bystander hostility toward supervisor. At the same time, it discusses the moderation effect of bystander traditionality on the two paths.

This study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey. The data were collected from 454 employees and their coworkers in several Chinese enterprises. The authors used Mplus 7.4 and adopted a bootstrapping technique in the data analysis.

Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to empathize with the abused colleague and thus exhibit more organizational citizenship behaviors, and peer abusive supervision also induces bystanders to develop hostility toward the abusive supervisor and thus produce more workplace negative gossip behaviors. In addition, it is found that bystander traditionality has a moderation effect in the process by which peer perceptions of abusive supervision influence bystander empathy and bystander hostility.

Based on Affective Events Theory, this study explores the mechanism of colleague perception of abusive supervision on bystander behavior from a bystander perspective. The results of this study not only provide a more comprehensive expansion of the weighting factors in the influence mechanism of abusive supervision but also provide new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behaviors.