Are You Gossiping About Me? The Costs and Benefits of High Workplace Gossip Prevalence

Whereas organizational research has historically focused on the negative effects of workplace gossip behaviors, in this paper, we draw on social information processing theory to examine both the benefits and costs of perceived work-related gossip prevalence. On the one hand, we suggest that perceived work-related gossip prevalence is beneficial to employees’ job performance. Employees who perceive work-related gossip prevalence to be high should...