Workplace Gossip and Employee Cynicism: The Moderating Role of Dispositional Envy

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between workplace gossip (positive gossip and negative gossip) and employee cynicism and explored the moderating role of dispositional envy through the social information processing approach. Data were collected via a three-stage survey in 24 companies with 307 employees across various industries in Taiwan and analyzed through hierarchical linear modelling regression analysis. The results showed that negative workplace gossip engendered employee cynicism, whereas the effect of positive workplace gossip was not significant. Moreover, dispositional envy moderates these relationships, which denotes that individual differences are an important factor affecting employee cynicism within organizations.

本研究採用社會訊息處理理論的觀點，探討職場八卦（正向八卦和負向八卦）與員工犬儒主義間的關係，並檢驗個人的氣質性嫉妒在其間的調節角色。研究者採取三階段取樣的方法，總共蒐集了來自台灣各個產業24家公司的307份員工資料，以階層線性模型（hierarchical linear modeling, HLM）進行資料之分析。研究結果發現負向職場八卦與員工犬儒主義呈顯著正向關，而正向職場八卦則與員工犬儒無顯著相關。此外，本研究也發現氣質性嫉妒可以調節職場八卦與員工犬儒主義間的關係，顯示個別差異是影響員工犬儒主義展現的重要因素之一。