Published on: April 23, 2026 at 10:21 am
By Nick Keppler
In addition to prescribed training, directives from management, and a company’s official written policies, employees also learn the norms of a workplace—company culture—through unofficial channels passed from employee to employee around the proverbial watercooler. Often this takes the form of stories about people within the organization acting badly or valiantly.
It may sound like gossip, but this is often how company culture and values are transmitted, said Academy of Management Scholar Christoper Myers of Johns Hopkins University, and it can have an impact on how people within an organization view it.
“It’s educating people on the way we do things around here, the way that people use stories to help prepare folks for things they might see or experience within the organization,” Myers said.
Myers points to a study by fellow Academy of Management Scholar Sean Martin of the University of Virginia that interviewed 632 newly hired employees at a large IT firm.
Employees who had heard stories about low-level employees upholding values were more likely to engage in positive work behaviors meant to help others within the company. On the other hand, they were less likely to do so if they heard stories about employees acting badly or violating norms—especially if they were high-ranking executives.
It’s the difference between learning the “truth” about a company by being told about a time everyone banded together and tackled a difficult situation or being told something scandalous about a manager.
This is one form of vicarious learning: knowledge gained through understanding the experience of others rather than one’s own trial and error, according to Myers. It is an important kind of transmitting information in the workplace, but one that often receives less direct attention because management doesn’t control it; rather, rank-and-file employees do through casual conversation.
Managers should not ignore or downplay these “more nuanced versions of vicarious learning,” Myers said, because they have an effect on employees’ self-image, morale, ethics, behavior, and performance.
