Don’t Speak Ill of Others Behind Their Backs: Receivers’ Ostracism (Sender-Oriented)  Reactions to Negative Workplace Gossip

PURPOSE: Previous studies on negative workplace gossip have neglected the role of gossip receivers. The current study aims to explore the interpersonal interaction mechanism between gossip receivers and communicators. Drawing on social information processing theory, we propose a theoretical model for the relationships between negative workplace gossip, psychological safety, ostracism, and coworker-exchanges. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Multi-wave data of 386 employees from eight service-oriented companies in China supported the proposed framework. Critical incident techniques and time-lag method were used for data collection. SPSS and Mplus were employed for hypothesis test. RESULTS: The empirical results indicated that negative workplace gossip was positively related to gossip receivers’ ostracism (sender-oriented), among which receivers’ psychological safety (sender-oriented) played a mediating role. In addition, the coworker exchange relationship moderated the relationship between negative workplace gossip and ostracism, and the psychological safety of interviewees also plays a mediating role. Specifically, the effect of negative workplace gossip on psychological safety and the mediating effect of psychological safety were stronger when the coworker exchange relationship was higher. CONCLUSION: Drawing on social information processing theory, the present study constructed a process model of the recipients’ sender-oriented ostracism reactions to negative workplace gossip, which helps explain the cognitive psychological mechanism and the boundary conditions of the above “perception-interpretation-behavior” social information process model. The above framework contributes to both theory and practice.