Supervisor Gossip in Organizations: Its Social Comparison Function and performance outcome

Abstract

Workplace gossip is ubiquitous in organizations. However, it is generally viewed as a deviant behavior that produces negative work-related outcomes. Contrary to this prevailing belief, recent work has begun to shed light on the finding that workplace gossip has the potential to generate positive influences. Drawing on the social comparison and social cognitive perspectives of gossip, we adopt a balanced view to investigate the pros and cons of supervisor’s job-related gossip for employee recipients. We propose that supervisor’s job-related gossip has social comparison function for recipients, such that positive gossip results in recipients’ upward comparison while negative gossip leads to downward comparison. Dyadic data collected from 218 supervisors and their 671 employees in a Chinese enterprise showcased evidence for the positive influence of supervisor’s job-related positive gossip and negative influence of negative gossip on recipients’ performance through self-efficacy. In addition, the indirect effect of positive gossip is attenuated when recipients have salient performance goals. Our research enriches the current understanding of workplace gossip functions, which extends social comparison theory to multi-disciplinary application. The empirical findings also provide guidance for business practitioners to make proper use of positive gossip and to be cautious of negative gossip when interacting with employees.