Extending a helping hand: How receiving gratitude makes a difference in employee performance during a crisis

Dan Ni, Lynda Jiwen Song, Xiaoming Zheng, Jinlong Zhu, Mengyi Zhang and Lingxiao Xu

Journal of Business Research, 2022, vol. 149, issue C, 967-982

Abstract: Although organizational crises, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, are shocks for employees, their expression of gratitude can be viewed as a silver lining. Drawing on social exchange theory and the social functions of emotion perspective, we develop a model that elucidates why and when benefactors who receive gratitude expression can perform better in the COVID-19 crisis. We propose that receiving gratitude expression as a potential consequence of providing crisis-related help to coworkers enhances one’s crisis self-efficacy and perceived social impact, which, in turn, positively relates to adaptation to a crisis, task performance, and helping behaviors toward leaders. The perceived novelty of the COVID-19 crisis strengthens the positive effect of receiving gratitude expression on crisis self-efficacy, and the perceived criticality of the crisis strengthens the positive effect of receiving gratitude expression on perceived social impact. A scenario-based experiment and five-wave field survey with Eastern and Western employees generally support our hypotheses.

Keywords: Helping coworkers in a crisis; Gratitude expression; Crisis self-efficacy; Perceived social impact; Adaptation to a crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:149:y:2022:i:c:p:967-982

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.05.055

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