Vicki Davis's Library tagged gossip → View Popular

Filter:
All
Annotated

03 Nov 09

Findings - Ethnographic Study Looks at Gossip in the Workplace - NYTimes.com

Office gossip (this study on an elementary school and their gossip against a principal) hurts EVERYONE including your school and in this case, test scores declined. Remember that when you gossip, you also hurt yourself and if you didn't already know this, take a read here about office gossip and how to intervene and stop it.

www.nytimes.com/...03tier.html - Preview

education learning gossip psychology edu_news

once someone made a negative comment about a person who wasn’t there, the conversation would get meaner unless someone immediately defended the target.
gossip in the workplace also tended to be overwhelmingly negative, but the insults were more subtle and the conversations less predictable, says Tim Hallett, a sociologist at Indiana University.
10 more annotations...
- Office gossip can be a form of reputational warfare
- Dr. Hallett found that the teachers became so comfortable with him and his camera that they would freely insult their bosses during one-on-one interviews. But at the teachers’ formal group meetings, where they knew that another teacher might report their insults to the principal, they were more discreet.
- they sometimes offered obliquely sarcastic comments to test the water
- praise the predecessor
- The teachers’ gossip never got as blatantly mean as the teenage girls’
- The principal felt that her authority was being undermined by gossip and retaliated against teachers she suspected (correctly) of criticizing her.
- in this case it was also a form of warfare that brought everyone down
- it is more realistic to try managing it.
- That simple question, a dare made in a pleasant voice
- “Don’t we have some work to do here?”