Sunday, February 24, 2008

Gossip is a message to leaders

Gossip has a negative connotation, but it could also be called "strategic information sharing", says Michael Morris, professor at Columbia Business School.

"Gossips fills an information void, and it can be considered a warning to management to do a better job of communicating to employees", Says Mitch Kusy, professor at Antioch University.

Gossip is a natural part of human evolutions, says David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University. "Human beings are voracious consumers of information...That's why we call gossip 'juicy.' It's like tasty food and we hunger for it. And because humans are cooperative animals, when I get a piece of information you need, I just have to give it to you"

- from Career Couch, Eileen Zimmerman, New York Times

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