Teacher opinions on organizational rumor and gossip

Communication maintains its importance since the day of existence of humanity. It is possible for people to live in peace and tranquility, to unite in line with common goals, and to achieve success in cooperation in organizations with healthy communication. In cases where healthy communication cannot be established, rumors and gossip are experienced. Studies have shown that rumors and gossip can lead to negative results. It has been observed that in previous thesis studies in which teachers' opinions were taken, quantitative research methods were mostly preferred. For this reason, in this study, which aims to examine teachers' opinions about organizational rumor and gossip in depth, qualitative research method was preferred and the phenomenology pattern, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The working group consists of 15 teachers working in the Ministry of National Education. The data were obtained with a semi-structured interview form. Descriptive analysis was used in the analysis of the data. Teachers defined the concept of rumor as unfounded information that is mostly uncertain and spread from ear to ear. They defined the concept of gossip as negative conversations that spread from ear to ear, are not certain, and are talked about behind others' backs. Teachers stated that rumors and gossip arose due to reasons such as curiosity, envy, jealousy, and liking to investigate the lives of others. It has been stated that rumors and gossip will cause distrust in organizations, deterioration of relations, increase in groupings, increase in conflicts and decrease in productivity. In order to prevent gossip and rumors in organizations; They made suggestions such as organizing events where people can spend time together, people being open and open, healthy communication should be established, rules being determined clearly and applied equally to everyone, and awareness-raising training should be given regarding the harms of gossip and rumors.