Exploring the dual impact of workplace gossip on employee voice behavior: A social identity perspective

Abstract

How positive and negative workplace gossip affect employees' voice behavior remains to be explored, especially in the context of collectivism. Based on social identity theory, this study investigates the relationships between positive and negative workplace gossip and employees' voice behavior by examining organizational identification as a mediator and collectivism as a moderator. We conducted multi-source studies by collecting three-wave supervisor–subordinate dyadic data, one with 342 workers from diverse organizations in China mainland. We found Positive workplace gossip positively affects employees' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior through organizational identification. On the contrary, negative workplace gossip negatively affects employees' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior. We further identify collectivism as an important moderator that influences the direct impact of workplace gossip on organizational identification and indirect impact of workplace gossip on employees' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior via organizational identification. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.