Gratitude at Work Works! A Mix-Method Study on Different Dimensions of Gratitude, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance

Michela Cortini, Daniela Converso, Teresa Galanti, Teresa Di Fiore, Alberto Di Domenico and Stefania Fantinelli
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Michela Cortini: Department of Psychological, Health and Territory Sciences, Università“G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti CH, Italy
Daniela Converso: Department of Psychology, University of Turin, via Verdi 10, 10124 Turin, Italy
Teresa Galanti: Department of Psychological, Health and Territory Sciences, Università“G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti CH, Italy
Teresa Di Fiore: Department of Psychological, Health and Territory Sciences, Università“G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti CH, Italy
Alberto Di Domenico: Department of Psychological, Health and Territory Sciences, Università“G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti CH, Italy
Stefania Fantinelli: Department of Psychological, Health and Territory Sciences, Università“G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti CH, Italy

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 14, 1-12

Abstract: Gratitude may be defined as a personal positive tendency to recognize and respond with gratitude to positive experiences. It has been extensively described within personal relationship literature, showing its correlations with life satisfaction and decreased psychopathology. We propose here to consider gratitude as both a personal and an organizational value able to improve job performance and job satisfaction. The specific aim is twofold: to explore how public administration workers are used to express and perceive gratitude in the workplace, and to validate a serial mediation model, in which dispositional, collective, and relational gratitude are predictors of job satisfaction and job performance. We have designed a mix-method study, with a survey and a diary study, choosing to collect data also on a daily basis because we were interested in gratitude exchanges in work contexts using the event-sampling data method. Nine employees from several Italian public administrations completed a gratitude diary for ten working days in the initial qualitative part of the study. Afterwards, a sample of 96 Italian public administration employees filled in a questionnaire with measures related to job satisfaction, job performance, and three dimensions of gratitude: dispositional, collective, and relational. Results confirm that the three types of gratitude are predictors of job performance and job satisfaction and this relation has been tested in a serial mediation model. This investigation on gratitude has practical implications for the planning of training interventions framed in the positive psychology context.

Keywords: dispositional gratitude; collective gratitude; relational gratitude; job satisfaction; job performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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