There was an interesting quote from the show Mr Roboto that went something like, "Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power."
That seems to correlate pretty well with what this study says.
What I find interesting about the whole sexual harassment, sexual assault furor that's erupted in Murica recently is the fact that nobody seems to be aware of the fact that it's not about sex, it's about power.
I can speak from the viewpoint of decades in the workplace and say that the people who abuse their power don't just do it to members of the opposite sex and it's not always sexual in nature.
Making you work late at the last minute or having you come in on the weekend or any number of bullshit tasks assigned to "underlings" is just a different manifestation of the same kind of behavior.
Well it's still about sex, pleasure drives the sexual assault, not merely power over another. Without pleasure in sex, there likely would not be sexual assaults simply for the motivation to have power over another. Living for pleasure as the importance in life, is a lower consciousness modality of living where higher living potential is ignored in favor of various forms of gratification.
I would respond that sometimes sex is about sex, period. And that the causation probably runs this way: power is a means to obtain sex -- c.f., historical examples of unbridled power like Genghis Khan, who had up to 500 wives. This is not to say that's laudable, but rather to understand a point: given lots of power, men have more opportunities for sex. Which is also not to say women might be interested in the same thing, but evidence suggests they're less likely to do so. Climbing a dominance hierarchy is tough, and making it to the top is a signal -- evolutionarily, women can outsource a portion of the process of selecting a mate to outcomes determined by dominance hierarchies.
I like your point about the nature of power abuse in the workplace -- this is not always a gendered or sexually-based phenomenon, and sometimes takes a sadistic tenor.
Overall the study is great, though perhaps missing a useful connection with the evolutionary bases of the behavior observed. For example, that verbal sparring (of which gossip is a type) can be a replacement for physical conflict, and that women, being less muscular and smaller, must gossip as a form of survival. Having a lot of bigger and stronger men around means you've got to be clever.
And, sadly, our culture is full of people seeking instant gratification.