Can Gossip Buffer the Effect of Job Insecurity on Workplace Friendships?

Homeworking and Employee Job Stress and Work Engagement: A Multilevel Analysis from 34 European Countries

Working from home (WFH) has had both positive and negative impacts on the work conduct. To maximise the benefits of homeworking, previous literature mainly focuses on creating self-help strategies for homeworkers to reduce work stress and maintain work engagement. However, fewer studies take on the policymaker perspective and evaluate optimal working conditions in the homeworking context. Using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, this study evaluates the effects of various work characteristics (job demands and resources) on the stress and engagement of infrequent and frequent homeworkers. Using the sixth European Working Conditions Survey 2015 which contains 5090 participants from 34 European countries, we studied 6 job demands and 5 job resources via Exploratory Factor Analysis. After testing the model's fitness using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, multiple mixed-effects models were used to test the job demands and resource effects on worker stress and engagement. Dominance Analysis was then used to identify the relative importance of each job demand and resource when explaining employee stress and engagement. We found emotional demands, time pressure, and workload to be the top three demand factors that cause work stress across the groups. Other than daily homeworkers, a positive and fair social climate is the most prominent resource able to boost job engagement across all of the other groups. By identifying the homeworkers' most influential demands and resources, this study will help managers better understand the steps to take to provide healthy job conditions for homeworkers.

The relationship between positive workplace gossip and job satisfaction: The mediating role of job insecurity and organizational identity

From the perspective of social information processing theory and social identity theory, 1,267 employees were selected as the subjects, and the data were statistically analyzed by using Mplus8.0 and SPSS25.0 to explore the relationship between positive workplace gossip and job satisfaction and the role of job insecurity and organizational identity in this relationship. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between positive workplace gossip and job satisfaction. Furthermore, job insecurity and organizational identity independently mediated the relationship between positive workplace gossip and employee job satisfaction. In addition, job insecurity and organizational identity played a serial mediating role in the relationship between positive workplace gossip and job satisfaction. The results of the study shed light on how job insecurity and organizational identity were associated with the process of the positive workplace gossip-job satisfaction relationship. Based on the findings, implications and avenues for future research were discussed.

Impact of Demographic Characteristics on Workplace Friendship: A Meta-Analytic Review

Although demographic characteristics are the most analyzed variables in the literature on workplace friendship, their effects on its formation and development remain unclear, owing to conflicting results. To draw generalizable conclusions, this study employed meta-analytical techniques to examine the relationships between employees' demographic characteristics and their workplace friendship, and investigated whether collectivism and year of data collection moderated this relationship. Seventy-seven empirical pieces of literature and 219 correlations (N = 34,856) were included in the final meta-analysis. Our findings revealed that male employees acquired more workplace friendships than female employees, and that organizational tenure, hierarchical position, and education were positively related to workplace friendships. However, employees' age and marital status had no significant effect on workplace friendships. Furthermore, the results of the moderating effects analysis suggested that, as collectivism diminished and data collection was delayed, the impact of certain demographic characteristics on workplace friendships became weaker.

Spilling tea at the water cooler: A meta-analysis of the literature on workplace gossip

This paper presents a meta-analysis on workplace gossip as a predictor of individual, relational, and organizational outcomes. Our systematic review yielded 52 independent studies ( n = 14,143). Results suggested that negative workplace gossip has a more deleterious association with workplace outcomes than positive gossip. Furthermore, findings indicated that negative gossip has a disproportionately negative association with attitudinal/affective outcomes and coworker relationships for targets of gossip. Unexpectedly, results also suggested that senders and recipients of negative gossip may also experience highly deleterious outcomes; in fact, the relations between negative gossip and well-being, engagement/performance, supervisor relationships, and organizational outcomes were more negative for gossip participants than targets, although the direction of causality for these relations has yet to be conclusively determined. Overall, our results suggest that organizations and managers should take seriously the threat of negative gossip to the health of the organization at large, while simultaneously leveraging the potential benefits of positive gossip. Plain Language Summary This paper presents a meta-analysis on the topic of workplace gossip as a predictor of work-relevant outcomes. Results—which were based on 52 independent studies that, in total, employed 14,143 independent research participants—suggested that negative workplace gossip has a worse impact on individual, relational, and organizational outcomes than positive gossip does. Furthermore, our findings indicated that targets of negative gossip experience the worst outcomes in terms of attitudes/affect and coworker relationships, when compared with the outcomes of individuals who exchanged the gossip. Unexpectedly, patterns of results also suggested that individuals who exchange negative gossip at work may also experience highly deleterious outcomes, although the direction of causality for these relations has yet to be conclusively determined. Overall, our results suggest that organizations and managers should take seriously the threat of negative gossip to the health of the organization at large, and may also be able to leverage the potentially beneficial effects of positive gossip. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results.

Capturing Workplace Gossip as Dynamic Conversational Events: First Insights From Care Team Meetings

Even though gossip is a ubiquitous organizational behavior that fulfils important social functions (e.g., social bonding or emotion venting), little is known about how workplace gossip and its functions unfold in situ. To explore the dynamic nature and social embeddedness of workplace gossip, we develop a behavioral annotation system that captures the manifold characteristics of verbal gossip behavior, including its valence and underlying functions. We apply this system to eight elderly care team meetings audio- and videotaped in the field, yielding a sample of N = 4,804 annotated behaviors. On this empirical basis, we provide first insights into the different facets and functions of workplace gossip in real-life team interactions. By means of lag sequential analysis, we quantify gossip patterns that point to the temporal and structural embeddedness of different types of workplace gossip expressions. Though exploratory, these findings help establish workplace gossip as a dynamic conversational event. We discuss future interdisciplinary research collaborations that behavioral observation approaches offer.

Suffering Job Insecurity: Will the Employees Take the Proactive Behavior or Not?

Job insecurity is considered an important antecedent of an employee’s creativity. Though, the relationship between job insecurity and proactive behavior has been neglected in previous human resources management studies. The aim of this study is to explore the influence of job insecurity on employees’ proactive behavior and its mechanism. Based on the social cognitive theory and cognitive appraisal theory, two types of cognitive appraisal of employee’s job insecurity (hindrance vs. challenge) as mediator variables of job insecurity and proactive behavior association. In addition, the moderator roles of self-efficacy are examined. This study is carried out with 257 employees from Chinese firms to examine the hypothesized moderated mediation model by using the hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrap. The results showed a different effect of job insecurity depending on its conceptualization. The results show that job insecurity has a negative effect on employees’ proactive behavior. At the same time, cognitive appraisal of employees’ job insecurity mediated the association between job insecurity and employee’s proactive behavior. Self-efficacy not only moderates the relationship between job insecurity and cognitive appraisal but also moderate the cognitive appraisal’s mediation effect between job insecurity and proactive behavior. The study’s theoretical and practical contributions and future research are discussed.

Work-to-Family Spillover Effects of Workplace Negative Gossip: A Mediated Moderation Model

Existing research has found that workplace negative gossip exerts a negative impact on employees and organizations. However, there is a lack of study on the spillover effect of workplace negative gossip on employees’ families. This paper aimed to address this gap in prior literature. Based on resource conservation theory, we chose married employees who perceived or suffered from workplace negative gossip as the subjects and analyzed the effect of workplace negative gossip on their work–family conflict. We adopted a self-reported questionnaire to assess employees’ perception or experience of workplace negative gossip, psychological distress, level of neuroticism, and work–family conflicts. A total of 245 valid employee questionnaires were obtained from two-wave data collection in China. The results of the empirical analysis indicated that workplace negative gossip perceived or suffered by employees has a positive impact on their work–family conflicts, and psychological distress plays a mediating role in the relationship between perceived or suffered workplace negative gossip and employees’ work–family conflict. Furthermore, we found that employees’ level of neuroticism moderates the positive effect of workplace negative gossip and work–family conflict, and it also moderates the mediating effect of workplace negative gossip on employees’ work–family conflict by psychological distress. The conclusion of this paper supported our previous hypotheses. Finally, according to the earlier findings, we discussed the theoretical contributions, practical significance, and limitations of the study and provided some practical suggestions for managers.