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When is Workplace Chat 'Just Gossip' and When is It 'Sharing Information'? It Depends Who's Doing It

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dc.contributor.authorGreenslade-Yeats, James
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-08T20:45:07Z
dc.date.available2025-04-08T20:45:07Z
dc.date.issued2025-03-17
dc.descriptionWhen two junior employees bump into each other in the corridor and start chatting about their manager’s overbearing manner, it’s typically considered gossip. But what about when two managers have an off-record catch-up to discuss an under-performing employee? Both scenarios meet traditional definitions of gossip – the information being shared is about other people, the people it’s about are absent, the information is shared in a way that casts judgement on those people, and it’s informal. Yet the two situations are viewed very differently. What counts as gossip is much more slippery than we might think. I reviewed 184 academic articles to understand what really constitutes workplace gossip. The key, I found, is not any set of objective criteria, but rather people’s shared agreement that a situation counts as gossip. This understanding of gossip helps us make sense of the “workplace gossip paradox” – the idea that gossip can be considered both a reliable source of social information (“the inside word”) and an unreliable information source (“just gossip”). My work also provides insights into how businesses can manage gossip before it becomes a scandal.
dc.identifier.citationThe Conversation. February 17, 2025. Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/when-is-workplace-chat-just-gossip-and-when-is-it-sharing-information-it-depends-whos-doing-it-251242
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10292/19009
dc.publisherThe Conversation New Zealand and Australia
dc.relation.urihttps://theconversation.com/when-is-workplace-chat-just-gossip-and-when-is-it-sharing-information-it-depends-whos-doing-it-251242
dc.rightsCC BY ND. We believe in the free flow of information. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.rights.accessrightsOpenAccess
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectworkplace gossip
dc.subjectGossip
dc.subjectProfessional misconduct
dc.subjectWorkplace bullying
dc.subjectCorruption
dc.subjectCommunication
dc.subjectNew Zealand
dc.titleWhen is Workplace Chat 'Just Gossip' and When is It 'Sharing Information'? It Depends Who's Doing It
dc.typeOther Form of Assessable Output
pubs.elements-id597792

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