Does Bad News Always Bring Bad Results? Effects of Workplace Negative-Event Sharing on Employee Behaviour

Given the prevalence of workplace personal negative-event sharing and its unknown cost to organizations, it is more pertinent than ever to analyse the effects on employee attitude and productivity exuded by the sharing behavior. This study provides an analysis of negative-event sharing between co-workers in a Chinese context, which we find as having psychological and physical effects in the workplace. We provide a responder-centric understanding of negative-event sharing and a dialectical perspective on how to effectively use this phenomenon to promote employee job involvement. We propose a dual-pathway model to examine differentiated employee behaviour from the perspective of two responses: reflection and complacency, and examine the moderating effect of perceived coworker competence in the two paths. Primary data using multi-source survey questionnaire were collected from 231 employees and their respective managers of nationwide cities in China, and additional data conducting a situational experiment collected from 316 students with work experience. Hayes’ model 1 and model 7 have been used for the moderation and the moderated mediation analysis. The results imply that employee managers could effectively leverage workplace negative-event sharing to enhance employee productivity, reduce complacency, and promote healthy interactions and mutual growth among employees.