Gossip is a common phenomenon in the workplace, but yet relatively little is understood about its influence to employees. This study adopts social information theory and social cognitive theory to interpret the diverse literature on gossip, and to develop and test hypotheses concerning some of the antecedents of gossip, with an aim of developing knowledge of the relationship between gossip and employee behaviour in the workplace. The study analysed survey data in a two-stage process, from 362 employees across a range of industries in Taiwan. The findings revealed that job-related gossip predicted employee cynicism and mediated the relationship between psychological contract violation and cynicism, and that non-job-related gossip showed a similar but weaker effect to employee cynicism. The contribution made by this paper is of value to both the academic subject domain and managers in Human Resources. First, we have identified two constructs of gossip, job-related and non-job-related gossip not previously reported and a validated scale has been created. Second, we have confirmed that these different constructs of gossip impact differently on employee behaviour and therefore HR managers should be cautious about gossip in the workplace, as it can cause cynical behaviour amongst employees.

Taiwanese participants made better-than-average judgments on collectivistic and individualistic traits, evaluated the personal importance of those traits, and completed measures of psychological adjustment (depression, perceived stress, subjective well-being, and satisfaction with life). Replicating findings from other East Asian samples, participants self-enhanced (i.e., regarded the self as superior to peers) more on collectivistic than individualistic attributes and assigned higher personal importance to the former than the latter. Moreover, better adjusted participants manifested a stronger tendency to self-enhance on personally important attributes. These data are consistent with the view that self-enhancement is a universal human motive that is expressed tactically and at odds with the assertion that self-enhancement is a uniquely Western phenomenon.

Purpose: This study aimed to explore prevalent characteristics of organizational culture (OC) and common sources of work stress in a Taiwanese work context. The authors also aimed to analyze how characteristics of OC may be linked to stressors.Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative methodology of focus group discussions was adopted.Findings: Four characteristics of OC were identified, including: family‐kin, informal work obligations, organizational loyalty and subgroup involvement. Job characteristics, home‐work interface, interpersonal relationships and career development were identified as common sources of work stress. Content analysis revealed that characteristics of OC could either alleviate or aggravate stress, depending on employees' perception and attribution. Double‐coding analysis indicated that stressors related to job characteristics seem particularly linked to informal work obligation but not to organizational loyalty as characteristics of OC.Research limitations/implications: The exclusive reliance on qualitative methodology is a limitation of the present study. However, the results have both theoretical and practical implications. The authors note that Western findings regarding OC may not generalize completely to a different culture and the Taiwanese context supports distinctive features of OC and work stressors. Consequently, any effective corporate stress interventions should be formulated taking the core cultural values and practices into account.Originality/value: The in‐depth and culture‐sensitive nature is a major thrust of the present study, and the focus on the link between OC and stress is a rare effort in the Pan‐Chinese cultural context.

The present study examined the interrelation of personality characteristics, organizational justice, organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). An anonymous questionnaire survey was conducted, with 1662 participants representing a wide variety of jobs across heterogeneous organizations in Thailand. Statistical analysis indicated that CWB can be predicted by the following personality characteristics; conscientiousness, agreeableness, self-esteem, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience. Moderation analysis discovered that the association between personality characteristics and CWB is moderated by three factors; distributive justice, interactional justice and OCB. Structural Equation Modelling was adopted in order to examine the efficacy of the identified moderators, and revealed that interactional justice has the strongest moderating effect, followed by distributive justice and finally OCB. Implications of the findings to organizational management and personnel practitioners are discussed accordingly, including; that the occurrence of CWB could be reduced through the implementation of organizational justice enhancement policies; and that the prevalence of OCB atmosphere at work could also help alleviate the impact of personality characteristics on CWB.