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I control Michael Jackson’s Thriller, catch him and ruhahaha

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What’s the gossip in your office? What’s the gossip doing to your office? And what are the best strategies for gossips or antigossips to employ in the office? (…)

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 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. These “gossip episodes” are analyzed by Dr. Hallett and his co-authors. (…) “Gossip was a ‘weapon of the weak’: during a time in which teachers were disenfranchised, gossip empowered them and served to stigmatize Kox.”

{ TierneyLab/NY Times | Continue reading }

“Office gossip can be a form of reputational warfare,” Dr. Hallett says. “It’s like informal gossip, but it’s richer and more elaborate. There are more layers to it because people practice indirectness and avoidance. People are more cautious because they know they can lose not just a friendship but a job.”

During his two years studying the group dynamics at a Midwestern elementary school, which allowed him access on condition of anonymity, Dr. Hallett found that the teachers became so comfortable with him and his camera that they would freely insult their bosses during one-on-one interviews. But at the teachers’ formal group meetings, where they knew that another teacher might report their insults to the principal, they were more discreet.

Instead of making direct criticisms, they sometimes offered obliquely sarcastic comments to test the waters. They used another indirect tactic categorized as praise the predecessor, as in the meeting when a teacher fondly recalled a previous administration: “It was so calm, and you could teach. No one was constantly looking over your shoulder.” The other teachers quickly agreed. No one explicitly called the current principal an authoritarian busybody, but that was the obvious implication.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Paul Graham }





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