The People Bulletin

In his statement released on Monday, 19 July, he said:

"Sadly, there continues to be a huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and on occasion downright malicious gossip published about me personally. This has the potential to be a significant distraction in my current role as the national lead for counter terrorism."

Only last March, The People Bulletin ran an article from Dr Kathryn Waddington, which set out the positive aspects of ‘the grapevine’[1]

She has now conducted research into gossip into the workplace and is author of the forthcoming book, Gossip and Organisations. Despite the positive aspects of the grapevine outlined in the earlier article, recent events have highlighted the negative impact of gossip and their destructive consequences.

Her research reveals that there are, in fact, different types of gossip which occur in and about organisations. She explains:

 "Gossip can be classified as poisonous or predictive. Predictive gossip is a frequently ignored or silenced early warning signal of failure in organisational systems and processes, often dismissed as inconsequential ‘noise’. This type of gossip should be taken as seriously as a fire alarm, and we are currently developing a range of risk assessment tools to enable managers to discern and detect this form of valuable organisational knowledge.”

She continues: "Poisonous gossip is harmful and toxic, the ethical consequences of such gossip is damaging to individuals and institutional reputations and identities. Toxic gossip is a form of hazardous organisational waste and should be handled and managed as such, rather than being allowed to accumulate, get spilled, and cause harm."

See also:  ‘The Shadowside’ by Nick Cotter and Jo Potter in The People Bulletin, 10 September 2009.

[1] ‘In praise of the grapevine’, by Kathryn Waddington in The People Bulletin, 10 March 2011.