Leroy Gonsalves: How to Solve Quiet Quitting: Social Media Narratives, Worker Stereotypes, and Managerial Control

Economic Sociology Seminar presentation by Leroy Gonsalves, Boston University Questrom School of Business (with Charles Chu)

• Abstract: Managerial control practices evolve as elite actors—CEOs, business schools, and consulting firms—legitimate new approaches. Yet, platformized journalism increasingly elevates social media narratives—press coverage of viral online content produced by unknown creators seeking to monetize attention. Can such narratives shape managerial cognition, or do managers dismiss them as low-quality inputs to evidence-based decision-making? We examine ‘quiet quitting,’ a news story based on viral TikTok content that received unusually widespread business press coverage in 2022–2023 and framed Gen Z employees as leading a historic rise in counterproductive work behaviors. Our qualitative analysis of news articles (N=170) shows that journalists themselves raised concerns about the narrative’s accuracy, external validity, and newsworthiness, even as the story circulated. Across a series of survey experiments (N=3,167), we find that managers exposed to the dubious quiet quitting narrative did not increase selection of empathetic normative control practices (e.g. town halls, employee surveys). Instead, they significantly increased selection of rational (e.g. pay-for-performance incentives) and coercive control practices (e.g. returning workers to the office, digital surveillance). The narrative activated worker stereotypes about opportunism, and this mechanism persisted even when we provided critical commentary or company-specific indicators of strong work engagement. The findings advance the literature on managerial control by identifying social media narratives as a novel factor that can shape managerial cognition. The study more generally illustrates emerging challenges to collective sensemaking posed by the rising centrality of digital platforms in civic life.