Rumor Control
John Tierney of the New York Times wrote a fascinating article about gossip at work. And it’s not gossipy by any means. It highlights a scientific study published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.
Tierney explains:
The lead author, Timothy Hallett, a sociologist at Indiana University, spent two years studying the institutional politics at an elementary school in a Midwestern city. During that time, Dr. Hallett videotaped formal meetings among a group of teachers (one representative of the teachers from each grade level) who convened regularly to discuss problems and policies.
The teachers would occasionally start to deviate from the official agenda and discuss their feelings about the administrators, particularly the principal, who was disliked for her style and her effort to impose more “accountability” on the teachers.
The researchers learned that in this formal setting the teachers were informally evaluating the principal and establishing her reputation.
As teachers mocked the principal and complained about her being “stifling” and “hyper,” the atmosphere got more poisonous. The principal felt that her authority was being undermined by gossip and retaliated against teachers she suspected (correctly) of criticizing her. Teachers and administrators fled the school, and the students’ test scores declined.
“The gossip did serve to reinforce the teachers’ group solidarity, but in this case it was also a form of warfare that brought everyone down,” Dr. Hallett says. “It was reminiscent of the old saying that gossip is a three-pronged tongue: it can hurt the speaker and the listener, as well as the target.”
On his blog, Tierney asks for comments from readers: “Does any of this sound familiar? Have you seen gossip used as a weapon in your office?”
Tierney is interested in hearing about the effects of the type of office gossip you might expect in any workplace, but he might not consider the unique characteristics of an elementary school. So I’ll ask here: Is there anything about a school atmosphere that develops a specific type of gossip and gossip management? Are the researchers’ findings typical of all workplaces or specific to the “institutional politics” of schools?
November 3rd, 2009 at 09:20
While the researchers are looking at gossip and gossip management at school sites, I would be interested in a study of the effect of gossip on a school district. With the increase of blogging and social networking, rumors/gossip seem to spread across a school district faster then ever.