We review cross-disciplinary research on gossip and integrate it with two streams of theoretical scholarship: paradox theory and the communicative constitution of organization (CCO) perspective. In doing so, we develop what we label a paradox-constitutive perspective of organizational gossip. Our perspective holds that gossip does not merely reflect or reveal organizational paradoxes but contributes to constituting them. Drawing on an extensive narrative literature review (N = 184), we conceptualize organizational gossip as a socially constructed category of interpersonal communication that, paradoxically, is regarded as both an exceptionally reliable and exceptionally unreliable source of social information. In turn, we illustrate how this contradictory view of gossip engenders paradoxical tensions when gossip surfaces in organizational life, and we illuminate two specific tensions to which gossip contributes: resistance-authority tensions and inclusion-exclusion tensions. Our work has important implications for research on organizational gossip, paradox, and communication and suggests intriguing directions for future investigations.

中文翻译：

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组织八卦的悖论本构视角

我们回顾了关于八卦的跨学科研究，并将其与两个理论学术流相结合：悖论理论和组织传播构成（CCO）视角。在这样做的过程中，我们发展了我们所谓的组织八卦的悖论构成视角。我们的观点认为，八卦不仅反映或揭示了组织悖论，而且还促成了组织悖论的形成。根据广泛的叙述性文献综述（N = 184），我们将组织八卦概念化为一种社会建构的人际交流类别，矛盾的是，它既被视为异常可靠又异常不可靠的社会信息来源。反过来，我们说明了当八卦在组织生活中出现时，这种对八卦的矛盾看法如何产生矛盾的紧张局势，并且我们阐明了八卦所造成的两种特定的紧张局势：抵抗-权威的紧张局势和包容-排斥的紧张局势。我们的工作对组织八卦、悖论和沟通的研究具有重要意义，并为未来的研究提出了有趣的方向。