Examining an Inverted U-Shaped Curvilinear Relationship Between Workplace Negative Gossip and Team Member Behaviours: Meaningful Work as a Moderator

Abstract

Workplace negative gossip is an increasingly widespread behaviour in the organisational sphere and examining its impacts on team member behaviours has never been more essential. Therefore, based on the foundations of cognitive dissonance theory and the two key strategies of moral compensation and moral disengagement, an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between workplace negative gossip and team member behaviours was predicted (i.e., team member proactivity, team member proficiency and team member adaptivity). Mainly, it was expected that during an increase from low to moderate levels of workplace negative gossip, employees would increase their team member behaviours to compensate for their moral transgressions of participating in negative gossip behaviour. However, a further increase from moderate to high levels of workplace negative gossip would ensue in a decrease in team member behaviours as employees sought to disengage from their negative gossip behaviours and transfer the responsibility onto external reasonings. Additionally, a moderating role of meaningful work in the curvilinear relationship between workplace negative gossip on team member behaviours was also proposed. Through two-wave cross-lagged data consisting of 161 university employees, it was discovered that the inverted U-shaped relationship between workplace negative gossip and the outcomes of team member proactivity and team member proficiency were stronger in employees reporting low levels of meaningful work than employees reporting high levels of meaningful work.