Trust and Organizational Rumor Transmission

Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2013

Available online July 2013 The study aims to provide understanding on the way people understand rumours at their workplace from the other person's perspective. Specifically, this study examines the factors that influence the conception of rumours. Using purposive sampling and the researchers as the instrument, this study found that the conception of rumours in workplace are caused by several factors and these factors are categorised into rumour context and functions reliant and rumour content reliant. Rumour context and functions reliant comprise of ambiguity, making sense of unclear issues, threat management and self-image enhancement. Rumour content reliant includes instrumentally relevant and communicated information statements, not so sure, it is a matter of assumption and as a mode of transmission and structure. This study also found that frustration is a foundation to rumour's gateway. The findings in this study highlight the widespread, yet remarkably under-researched practice in organisational behaviour in relation to informal communications.

Economics & Sociology, 2020

The relationship between organisational trust and informal knowledge sharing is a rarely researched area. This is especially true in the case of workplace gossip, which acts as a channel of informal knowledge sharing. The aim of the research is to point out that although there is a strong positive relationship between organisational trust and knowledge sharing, the special form of informal knowledge transfer/sharing (workplace gossip), refuting earlier research findings, does not always produce a positive effect. In the first part of the two-phase quantitative research (it was done in 2019), trust and its conditions, tools and their place in the organisational hierarchy were identified through questionnaire surveys, and then the existence of informal knowledge transfer/sharing (workplace gossip) and its impact upon organisational trust were analysed. The hypotheses were tested on the basis of an own theoretical model using one and multi-variable statistical methods with the SPSS 25 and NVivo 12 content analysis software. The results show that while confidence building is supported by high quality real-world professional knowledge transfer/sharing, but workplace gossip, especially including fake information, has the opposite effect, which negatively influences organisational performance.

Communication Research Reports, 1998

Source appropriateness in denying rumors of organizational change was investigated in a laboratory context. As predicted, results revealed that the denial by the source highest in organizational position was not the most effective. Instead, the source most successful in reducing anxiety associated with the rumor and belief in the rumor was the one whose position level matched the scope of the rumor.

Organisational rumour mongering and informal knowledge transfer share common characteristics. They both rely on informal social groups for communication. Uncertainty caused from changing environments leads to increased activity in both. The process of rumour mongering involves discussing content. Implicit in the informal knowledge transfer process is the same. Although they share characteristics, rumour and informal knowledge transfer are treated differently. The former is seen as negative and destructive while the latter is a positive influence. This paper reports on an empirical pilot study carried out at a university to see if organisational rumour contributes toward informal knowledge transfer. The discussion focuses on the challenges encountered and limitations of researching a sensitive area such as rumour.

The Psychology of Organizational Change

Rumors play an important role in most, if not all, aspects of employee experience and responses to organizational change (DiFonzo and Bordia, 2006, 2007a). Take the example of readiness for change, a vital precursor to successful implementation of change (Jones, Jimmieson, and Griffiths, 2005). Readiness for change comprises employees' acceptance of the need for change and confidence (or efficacy) in their ability to carry out tasks needed for the change (Armenakis, Harris, and Mossholder, 1993). Rumors that allege illegitimate motivations for change can undermine the need for change. Similarly, rumors that allege incompetence-of-change managers can undermine efficacy beliefs. Because they materially affect the construction of the social reality of any organizational change, rumors are critically important aspects of change.

Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2006

Researchers have generally reported a positive linear relation between rumor anxiety and transmission but less consistent effects of situational anxiety and belief in the rumor. These conclusions, however, are based on relatively few studies that have only analyzed between-subject variance in rumor transmission and often in situations producing only moderate anxiety. We examined rumors stemming from 2 real-world settings: (a) the sudden death of a college student from meningitis and (b) the Washington, DC "sniper" shootings. We analyzed data using multilevel modeling and focused primarily on within-subjects variance. In both studies, we found strong overall effects of belief and typically no overall effect of rumor anxiety. More important, in both studies, a significant Belief × Anxiety interaction occurred. In contrast to past theorizing, the effects of belief were strongest for high-anxiety rumors. Also interesting was a significant curvilinear effect of anxiety at lower levels of belief in Study 1 and a significant main effect of situational anxiety in Study 2. We discuss the important contribution that multilevel modeling can make to the growing literature on rumor transmission.

Public Relations Review, 2011

a b s t r a c t and called for evidence-based research on differences between public and private sector communication. This article offers such data by focusing on an increasingly important domain of public relations (i.e., corporate communication about rumors vis-à-vis internal and external stakeholders).

Diogenes, 2007

This paper examines the stability of the concept of rumor in the past century. It is suggested that not only do models of explanation change, but rumors themselves also change-not just in content, but perhaps in the way they are believed or disbelieved. Social scientific interest in rumors begins with the birth of modern psychology in the 19th century, shifts to social psychology and sociology in mid-20th century, prompted by governmental concern over subversion through rumor during the Second World War, and is finally revived by folklorists in more recent decades. Understood variously as a conduit of the unconscious and otherwise unendorsable thoughts, a mundane communication drift, or an intentional form of deception and provocation, many of our rumor model assumptions are drawn from that era and remain basically unchallenged. A central assumption emerged that ambiguous situations create a vacuum which rumor fills. By the late 1960s, despite a decline in social scientific interest in the topic, a handful of significant empirical and theoretical challenges emerge from scattered studies. The discipline of folklore begins to take more interest in contemporary rumor in the 1970s, and by the early 1990s the rubric of the rumor is almost entirely supplanted in English language scholarship by the 'urban legend' (Brunvand, 1981). While the social construction of rumor among scholars has not been static over the decades, neither has the object of scrutiny itself-the rumor-as a quotidian practice. I aim to argue that the best evidence suggests that ambiguity surrounding rumors is often actively developed and imputed by interlocutors themselves, and selfconsciously subjective relationships to information are a more relevant explanation than gullibility or what Chorus describes as a lack of critical capacity (1953).

Published as: Gary Alan Fine, “Rumor, Trust and Civil Society: Collective Memory and Cultures of Judgment.” Diogenes 54: 5-18. 2007.