05.07.11 The 9th Organisational Consequence of Negative Gossip : Wrong Decisions

Wrong Decisions

Looking back, there are some wrong decisions that we made after the rumour against us broke. For instance, expecting to be vindicated soon, we kept holding on as the revenues dropped and bills piled up. The hope that our clients will wake up and realise that we had been framed took a toll on our organisation since we were not certain when the fire would end; and we had administrative expenses such as rent and salaries to cover.

In Nehemiah 6, we see how the man avoided making the wrong decision of hiding in the temple, irrespective of being intimidated by the corrupted prophets such as Shemaiah and his cohorts.

On reading our JuaLink story, there are several examples of decisions that had been made on the basis of negative gossip; for instance, the decision to investigate Faraja and Neema’s alleged fraudulence; and others.

Therefore, another common repercussion of negative gossip is the making of erroneous decisions based on false rumours. Some supervisors believe gossip as if it were ‘gospel truth’; and can therefore go as far as taking decisions without checking the authenticity of the information received. Such an approach can have severely harmful consequences for the organisation.