Rumors are often delicious to listen to but not when you're a manager and the rumor is about your company. We mean stuff much bigger than gossip and the grapevine. Author Allan J. Kimmel, of the ESCP-EAP European School of Management, explains the weird propagation of some nasty marketplace rumors that, no matter how loony, have afflicted huge organizations before and probably will again. McDonalds, for instance, was bedeviled by a rumored link to Satan as well as the false claim that its hamburgers were chock full of red worms. Similar rumors have afflicted otherwise normal companies from Procter & Gamble to the Coca Cola Company to Mrs. Fields Cookies.
Kimmel's book begins with a sober analysis of the psychology behind rumor mills. He then describes ways to prevent marketplace rumors, to neutralize rumors if they arise, and to manage the organizational grapevine. Imagination abhors a vacuum, and the key to avoiding trouble, it seems, is communication, communication, communication.
Referring to internal communications, perhaps an organization's first line of defense, he concludes, "By increasing the credibility of formal communications, employees should become more accepting of the information they receive from the top and less prone to accept unverified news through the grapevine relative to what is going on." —Martha Lagace