You just can't stop people talking, and while the canteen or coffee room may not be the most salubrious environment for a comfortable chin wag, put a few bodies in there at any one time and the mealy-mouthed murmur of merger pedalled from on high soon gets debunked. A few fig rolls later and the deconstructions are complete. A reconfigured tale of sell out, downsizing, efforts at survival . . . which that 'merger' is really . . . then emerges and catches hold. Or will soon;

perception is powerful and gossip gets around.

Office gossip can be valuable and easy to hone. It often has a felicitous capacity to capture the essence of what's really going on. We may read the MD's statement and be familiar with the facts in the Annual Report. We can recite the rules and regulations and muse over the Mission Statement, but we know too that the reality is in the subtext and the illusive truths have to be knitted together using our insider knowledge, myth making capacities, tea drinking fraternities and coffee break insight.

In the UK, Richard Olivier, son of Laurence and Joan Plowright now advises large corporations on how to integrate 'story' into their operations. Called 'mytho-drama', the technique involves listening to what people say about the workplace, combining this with the analytic results from the finance heavyweights and gaining real insight into the believable picture of the company and forecasting its potential.

A 2005 study into the function and meaning of office gossip looked at emotion expressed, as well as the topic of the gossip to see if these factors said anything specific about the organisations.

The findings suggest that gossip serves a stress reduction function and is a means of 'doing the emotional labour associated with the (nursing) work'.

The researcher, Kathryn Waddington of the City University in London warns that gossip can mask a real need to alter structures and systems, and therefore be a negative force; alternatively, it can act as a social and organisational frustration reliever.

Gossip has a bad reputation as the undependable, diverting, at best amusing meanderings of grumpy dissatisfied begrudgers or air headed lightweight chatterboxes. While this picture isn't entirely baseless, much of the stories put about at work are imbued with a lovely mix of the sinister and silly and the best ones have a salutary cut at the harshest of realities lurking behind the glamorous cover stories strategically released by marketing men and women.

Sometimes the merging of perspectives brought about by in-house musings, aided in no small way by email, brings forth genius results.

Why Owen has been 'off sick' for 3 months may not immediately captivate the imagination of the sales team, but when Sharon from accounts mentions rumour of a run-in with the MD, it's a good story.

How that story will be developed, who the bit players will be and what ultimate ending will be to the tale of corporate 'whodunit' will say volumes about the morale of the company, the leadership or lack of it and the level of trust between levels. All important aspects of the relationships that are the lifeblood of organisations.

Gossip isn't always a case of other people's miseries.

Sometimes gossip is just about stories and thinking aloud, presenting 'what if ' scenarios, exchanging insights and using fantasy to fix a few gaping holes in how things are done.

Research suggests that those who linger longer over a slice of innuendo may well make for better, more satisfied employees. Sometimes it's not what you say, but the fact that you bother saying it;

giving expression to the human need for stories and revelation, mystery and mischief may well lead to a more efficient employee body and ultimately an integrated, business environment.

According to Cognitive Scientist Mark Turner, we humans share storytelling as our chief means of understanding what's going on in our world. We understand and gain control over our immediate environment through constructing and reconstructing versions of reality reflecting the sea of activities we witness.

Ultimately, we seek out patterns and want to create a context using whatever is out there, so that those events can more easily be understood, shared, synthesised and, if need be, defended against in future.

The decibels in the canteen and the noise levels in the corridors of powerlessness is indicative - when there are no stories, or when employees sip their tea and merely shrug and sigh when a topic which will impact on their work life is being discussed, it often points to a less positive climate; noncommittal and apathy are much more pervasive signs of malcontent than a bit of injudicious but juicy gossip unevenly spread.

Stories of torrid extra marital affairs, for instance, are often rife in organisations where there is a degree of dysfunction within the existing structures and relationships; these sagas of marriage splits are mirroring relationship splits and disloyalties at large in the corridors of power rather than the domestic bedrooms.

Where the gossip focuses on Machiavellian power struggles, unfair advantages grasped and underhand machinations, bringing a Wild West ethic to the office, there is often a glaring lack of transparency in the way things are done there. This creates the vacuum easily filled with these tales born of conjecture, a dash of mistrust, procedural inconsistencies and feelings of being hard done by.

Orchestrated gossip campaigns within an employee group can have hugely negative ramifications for businesses, of course, if the word travels outside the organisations and undermines public confidence, but that this should happen says some thing is severely amiss in that organisation anyway.

In A Whole new Mind, Daniel Pink, suggests that organisations should use the stories told around the tea table in pursuit of insight into organisational goals. He says we can learn more from trading stories in the cafeteria than from reading the bank's official documents and reports.

Cuppa, anyone?

Patricia Murray is an organisational and work psychologist