Structural Foundations of Concrete Outcomes: Embeddedness Fosters Gossip, Trust, and Performance

Abstract

Prior work has shown that employees are more likely to trust colleagues that are more embedded in their professional network. The prevailing assumption is that embeddedness serves a social monitoring function: the more third-party connections employees share, the less they would risk engaging in behaviors that might destroy trust, such as lying and cheating. We propose that embeddedness not only deters behaviors that are harmful to trust, but also serves as a structural foundation for behaviors that establish and increase trust, such as gossip. We thus propose a structural theory of gossip. Data from field studies across three organizations in Mainland China supported the hypothesis that gossip mediated the positive relationship between embeddedness and trust. The higher levels of trust linked to embeddedness and gossip was associated with positive downstream consequences in colleagues’ peer performance evaluations of the gossiper. We further discuss the role of gender in moderating trust relationships developing from positive and negative gossip. This research underscores the role that seemingly passive network structures can play in shaping concrete behaviors that have important interpersonal and organizational outcomes.