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Translating What Is and Isn’t Said: Voice, Gossip, and Feedback in a Global Workplace

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What Isn’t Being Said

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Abstract

Voice, gossip, and feedback are workplace communication interactions that unfold differently depending on employees’ national culture backgrounds and communication styles. Low/high context communication norms impact the process of voice, silence, gossip, and feedback behavior in different parts of the world. We explore how voice, gossip, and feedback behavior manifest in message, relationship, time, and space contexts. We then offer suggestions for managing voice, gossip, and feedback across communication contexts in a diverse workplace and discuss future research directions.

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves nothing unsaid.

– Walter Winchell

The tongue weighs practically nothing but so few people can hold it.

– Anonymous

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Wendi L. Adair

  2. Sonoco International Business Department, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Nancy R. Buchan

  3. Department of Management and Organization, Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    **ao-** Chen

  4. Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Leigh Anne Liu

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  1. Wendi L. Adair
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  2. Nancy R. Buchan
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  3. **ao-** Chen
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  4. Leigh Anne Liu
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Adair, W.L., Buchan, N.R., Chen, XP., Liu, L.A. (2024). Translating What Is and Isn’t Said: Voice, Gossip, and Feedback in a Global Workplace. In: What Isn’t Being Said. Springer Series in Emerging Cultural Perspectives in Work, Organizational, and Personnel Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53645-8_6

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