Gossip in the workplace can be a weapon

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Gossip in the workplace can be a weapon in reputational warfare or an opportunity to enhance someone's reputation, U.S. researchers suggest.

Tim Hallett and Donna Eder, both of Indiana University Bloomington, and Brent Harger, now a sociologist at Albright College, identified subtle ways people who are targets of gossip are negatively evaluated during formal work meetings, including veiling criticism with sarcasm or talking up another colleague for comparison.

The study is based on a two-year ethnographic study of workplace politics at an urban elementary school. At the time, the school was undergoing an uncomfortable managerial transition as a new principal began her first full year. Relations with teachers had soured, and when the teachers were unsuccessful in their efforts to lodge complaints through official channels, they resorted to gossip.

Hallett observed meetings and classrooms, shadowed administrators and hung out in the teachers' lounge. He videotaped 13 teacher-led meetings that were considered formal but with varying levels of formality.

The study, published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, found gossip in a formal setting is both similar to and different from informal gossip. Both are almost always negative, yet informal gossip is more direct than formal gossip.

Once informal gossip begins the negative evaluations typically continue with a negative tone but for a shorter duration than the formal gossip, the study found.