How Supervisor Gossip and Regulatory Focus Interact to Impact Target's Proactive/Withdrawal Behavior

Abstract

Research on workplace gossip has predominantly examined its impact from the gossiper’s and the receiver’s perspectives. By regarding supervisor negative gossip as a stimuli of the target employee’s job stress and self-regulation, this article elucidates the impact of the interaction of supervisor negative gossip and regulatory focus on target employees’ cognitive appraisal of the gossip and subsequent proactive/withdrawal behavior. Integrating regulatory focus theory with the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, this article developed a dual-pathway model to explore how supervisor negative gossip interacts with the target employees’ regulatory focus to influence their proactive/withdrawal behavior via increasing their challenge/hindrance appraisal of the gossip. It is proposed that the interaction of supervisor negative gossip and the target employees’ promotion focus increases the employees’ proactive behavior and decreases their withdrawal behavior through improving their challenge appraisal, while the interaction of supervisor negative gossip and the target employees’ prevention focus decreases the employees’ proactive behavior and increases their withdrawal behavior through improving their hindrance appraisal.