Workplace gossip, or evaluative talk among individuals in an organization about a colleague who is not present (Kurland & Pelled, 2000), is pervasive (Dunbar, Marriott, & Duncan, 1997). Despite the prevalence of gossip at work, our understanding of the functions, consequences, and nature of workplace gossip is far from complete. First, gossip has traditionally been conceptualized as "idle chatter" (Kurland & Pelled, 2000), yet research has begun to demonstrate that employees engage in gossip for specific functions, such as to obtain information when trust in managers is low (Ellwardt, Wittek, & Wielers, 2012). Two presentations in this symposium highlight novel functions (e.g., self-promotion and coping with injustice) of workplace gossip. Second, recent studies have demonstrated that engaging in gossip can have consequences for the gossiper. For example, Farley (2011) found that high frequency gossipers are perceived as less powerful and are less liked than low frequency gossipers. To better understand how engaging in gossip influences colleagues' perceptions of the gossiper, one of the papers in this symposium investigates how cognitive and affective trust is differentially impacted when an employee engages in gossip. Third, gossip is a fundamentally triadic phenomenon involving a gossiper, a receiver, and a target (Dunbar, 2004; Keltner, Van Kleef, Chen, & Kraus, 2008), yet no method exists for studying gossip at the triadic level. One of the papers in this symposium establishes a new R package that allows researchers to study the triadic effects of gossip at work. Another paper leverages the methodology to investigate emotions as a mediator of the effects of gossip. Together this symposium brings together novel findings that further our understanding of the functions, consequences, and nature of gossip at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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