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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Organizational Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1516309

The Contingent Effects of Supervisor Positive Gossip on Employee Receivers: The Moderating Role of Performance Goal Orientation

Provisionally accepted
  • 1School of Business, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Region, China
  • 2School of Business, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

While research on supervisor gossip has sought to provide a balanced examination of its potential benefits and drawbacks for employees, there remains a significant disparity in the attention given to positive versus negative gossip. By integrating social comparison theory and goal orientation theory, we propose that the impact of supervisor positive gossip on employee receivers' self-efficacy and job performance is contingent upon the level of employees' performance goal orientation (PGO). We argue that high-PGO employees are expected to experience lower levels of self-efficacy upon receiving supervisor positive gossip, whereas low-PGO employees are anticipated to experience higher self-efficacy. Additionally, we suggest that employees' self-efficacy mediates the relationship between supervisor positive gossip and job performance. Dyadic data collected from 161 supervisors and 556 employees in a Chinese company support our hypotheses. Our findings contribute to a more nuanced discourse on the role of supervisor positive gossip in organizational dynamics and its implications for employee well-being and productivity.

Keywords: supervisor positive gossip1, self-efficacy2, performance goal orientation3, social comparison4, workplace gossip5

Received: 24 Oct 2024; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zhang and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Chunling Zhu, School of Business, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

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