Researching the Mechanisms of Gossip in Organizations: From Fly on the Wall to Fly in the Soup

In this paper, I explored how to research a sensitive topic such as gossip in organizations and used a narrative approach to illustrate the methodological and ethical issues that come up when considering a variety of research methods. I first attempted to conduct an ethnographic research on a project group from a Dutch university undergoing a major change. At the very beginning of the project, as a participant observer, I struggled to remain an outsider, or a “fly on the wall.” But as issues of power came into play and access became increasingly problematic, I moved towards the role of an “observing participant.” Therefore, in order to research gossip and some of the hidden dimensions of organizational life, I turned to auto- and self-ethnography as a way to regain access and greater authenticity. While following this route presented its share of ethical and methodological issues, it also provided valuable insights that could be of value to researchers attempting to study sensitive topics such as gossip in organizations

Gossip in organisations: Contexts, consequences and controversies

This article examines the key themes surrounding gossip including its contexts, the various outcomes (positive and negative) of gossip as well as a selection of challenges and controversies. The challenges which are highlighted revolve around definitional issues, methodological approaches, and ethical considerations. Our analysis suggests that the characteristics and features of gossip lend itself to a process-oriented approach whereby the beginning and, particularly, end points of gossip are not always easily identified. Gossip about a subject or person can temporarily disappear only for it to re-surface at some later stage. In addition, questions pertaining to the effects of gossip and ethical-based arguments depend on the nature of the relationships within the gossip triad (gossiper, listener/respondent and target)

Gossip at Work: Unsanctioned Evaluative Talk in Formal School Meetings

This article uses a form of linguistic ethnography to analyze videotaped recordings of gossip that took place during formal school meetings. By comparing this gossip data against existing models of gossip based on data collected in informal settings, we identify eleven new response classes, including four forms of indirectness that operate to cloak gossip under ambiguity, and seven forms of avoidance that change the trajectory of gossip. In doing so, this article makes three larger contributions. First, it opens a new front in research on organizational politics by providing an empirically grounded, conceptually rich vocabulary for analyzing gossip in formal contexts. Second, it contributes to knowledge about social interactions in organizations. By examining gossip talk embedded within a work context, this project highlights the nexus between structure, agency, and interaction. Third, it contributes to understandings of gossip in general. By examining gossip in a context previously unexamined, this project provides analytical leverage for theorizing conditions under which gossip is likely and when it will take various forms

Confidential Gossip and Organization Studies

This essay sets out the case for regarding confidential gossip as a significant concept in the study of organizations. It develops the more general concept of gossip by combining it with concepts of organizational secrecy in order to propose confidential gossip as a distinctive communicative practice. As a communicative practice, it is to be understood as playing a particular role within the communicative constitution of organizations. That particularity arises from the special nature of any communication regarded as secret, which includes the fact that such communication is liable to be regarded as containing the ‘real truth’ or ‘insider knowledge’. Thus it may be regarded as more than ‘just gossip’ and also as more significant than formal communication. This role is explored, as well as the methodological and ethical challenges of studying confidential gossip empirically

Everyday Secrecy:Boundaries of Confidential Gossip

Gossip is an everyday part of organizational life and has been increasingly researched. However, some gossip has a particular character, whereby it is to some degree secret. Drawing on studies of both gossip and secrecy, in this paper we explore this ‘confidential gossip’ via a participant observation case study. This was based on an internship with Quinza, a British media company, and had a covert element which is discussed and justified. Specifically, we show how the boundaries around confidential gossip are marked in organizational interactions. The paper contributes to existing knowledge about organizational gossip by showing the particular significance of secrecy which makes confidential gossip a more potent source of group inclusion and exclusion

Organizational gossip, sense-making and the spook fish: A reflexive account

This paper offers a reflective and reflexive account of doing research into gossip in healthcare organisations. It advances the concept of sense-making, drawing upon Weick’s perspective theoretically and reflexively to incorporate a ‘sixth sense’ of intuition. The spookfish, which has developed highly specialised eyes to cope with very low light levels, is used as an organising metaphor to illustrate how attention to everyday talk can illuminate our understanding of gossip and intuition in organisational and managerial contexts. The paper exemplifies some practical aspects of working reflexively, illustrating how critical conversations and metaphor were used in the research process, and beyond, as a means of encouraging creative thought in the emergent scholarship of organisational gossip

Breaking the Silence: The role of gossip in organizational culture

From the early 1980s, the number of studies pertaining to organizational culture expanded considerably to the point where it could reasonably be argued that the field had reached a level of maturity. Perhaps indicative of this maturity was the publication of the first handbook of organizational culture and climate (Ashkanasy et al. 2000). The commencement of academic interest in the topic of organizational culture generally coincided with the publication of two books mainly aimed at practitioners—Peters and Waterman’s, In search of excellence (1982) and Deal and Kennedy’s, Corporate cultures: the rites and rituals of corporate life (1982). This is not to suggest that these books account exclusively for the intellectual curiosity generated in the function and purpose of culture for an organization as there were well-known examples which had earlier sought to address the issue of organizational cultures (e.g. Pettigrew 1979). Nonetheless, these tomes were influential in raising interest in, and scope for, research on organizational culture