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

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.

1. Introduction

In the field of positive psychology, some authors [1] have defined gratitude as a dispositional tendency, meant as a personality trait. They described gratitude as part of a wider life orientation towards noticing and appreciating the positive in the world [1] (p. 891). Other scholars [2] have demonstrated that a higher dispositional gratitude augments the tendency to use positive reframing, which in turn positively affects one’s life event interpretations. Indeed, Chen [3] described gratitude as having both affective and cognitive elements.

The interest in gratitude, as an organizational value able to positively affect individual and collective dimensions, is quite recent. Gibbs [4], among others scientific contributes, observed that gratitude in the workplace is not related to a specific contract relationship nor to a precise role, but it is a natural individual attitude.

The aim of the present study is to extend the positive effects of gratitude to the work life and to evaluate the direct and mediated consequences on job satisfaction and job performance.

More specifically, we are interested in evaluating how different kinds of gratitude, such as collective, dispositional, and relational, are related to an individual and an organizational psychological dimension. The originality of our study is represented by the simultaneous evaluation of the three different dimensions of gratitude, relating them to both individual and collective organizational factors.

Through the implementation of a mix methodology we could explore both the quantitative and the qualitative dimensions, involving an in-depth investigation and a constructive synthesis of both data and analysis.

The recent contribution by Di Fabio et al. [5] related to gratitude in organizations represents the formalization of the construct framed in the context of positive psychology and psychology of harmony sustainability [6,7,8]. These authors collected and analyzed several literature contributions in order to define the relevance of gratitude in different aspects of organizational life.

Prior to Di Fabio et al.’s work [5], there were others research studies that deepened the gratitude construct. For example, one research study aimed at correlating gratitude and organizational constructs, such as job performance [9]; in this case, the authors included gratitude among many others values that contribute to the definition of organizational virtuousness. Positive attitudes, such as gratitude, are often ignored in organizational life if they do not have a direct relationship with more concrete outcomes; several scholars [9,10] have demonstrated this relation thanks to two specific characteristics of general virtuousness. These are the amplifying and the buffering attributes; the former can encourage more positive consequences, while the latter can prevent negative implications [9]. Grant and Wrzesniewski [11] studied the mediating effect of gratitude on the relationship between self-evaluation and job performance, showing that other-oriented employees experience higher levels of anticipated guilt and gratitude, which appeared to motivate them to channel high core self-evaluations toward high performance. A recent study by Stegen and Wankier (2018) [12] also showed a positive effect of “attitude to gratitude” on job satisfaction, with an increase in collaborations between workers [13]. The Arenas study is among the studies that have investigated the frequency with which there are episodes of bullying in the workplace and how this can affect employees’ satisfaction at work and psychological well-being [14]. This phenomenon has been investigated starting from a contextualized approach. One of the strengths of this study concerns the comparison of the data obtained on a sample of Italian employees and on a sample of Spanish employees. The authors concluded that cultural factors are fundamental for developing a bullying reduction policies and programs for organizations. The results of this study are relevant for the purposes of this research, as through their hypothesized mediation-moderation model they highlighted the role of job satisfaction in mediating the relationship between bullying in the workplace and psychological well-being [14].

In line with this study, Di Marco and colleagues reiterated the role of satisfaction as a mediator in analyzing the consequences of the perception of a discriminatory work environment on health and psychological well-being of employees [15]. The perception of a discriminatory work environment has negative effects on the well-being and health of employees; this study underlines the need for Human Resource Managers to intervene to reduce explicit prejudices in order to create a healthy environment that is free of discrimination, and the importance of promoting job satisfaction to preserve personal well-being and better face potential negative effects. Moreover, positive relations between gratitude and coping styles were found [16], besides the positive effects of gratitude on depression symptoms [17].

Wood et al. [1] investigated the link between gratitude and wellbeing; their literature review offered a thoughtful analysis, including several psychological dimensions that correlated to gratitude, such as personality, emotional functioning, existential and humanistic conceptions, and health. According to their review, an increase in gratitude does improve wellbeing, but it is necessary to further deepen the difference between gratitude as behavior and gratitude as a personality trait. Thus, gratitude can be an emotion stimulated by the positive aspects in life and there can also be active interventions or communication acts aimed at increasing gratitude; the positive consequences can be valuable both for the giver and for the receiver [12]. Therefore, it is unavoidable that gratitude communication will affect a relationship or a social interaction. Furthermore, the positive relation between gratitude and prosocial organizational behavior was confirmed, explained by the feeling of being socially valued rather than by the self-efficacy attitude [18]. The link between gratitude and individual wellbeing can be also explained by the psychology of sustainability, which refers to the reciprocity between person and environment wellbeing [19].

In another research study, it was found that gratitude can be a predictor of organizational citizenship behaviors [20], and in this vein a measure for gratitude state was developed and validated. The same authors conducted additional studies with the experience sampling methodology focused on gratitude, combining them with the dispositional gratitude scale [21].

In another study conducted by Buote [22] gratitude activity related to job was compared with gratitude activity related to life in general—participants had to list things they were grateful for. It was found that the activity concerning the job could increase job satisfaction—employees were more satisfied in the next six months, also indirectly affecting turnover intentions. The relationship between gratitude and job satisfaction was empirically investigated by Waters [23], who demonstrated that only state and institutional gratitude predicted job satisfaction; dispositional gratitude did not have a predictive role in multiple hierarchical regression.

Moreover, concerning gratitude in the workplace, a recent work by Beck [24] analyzed the gratitude communication between managers and employees, and in particular the author found that expressions of gratitude were appreciated overall, and only a minimum part of the sample gratitude was defined as not necessary or even disliked. The interesting point raised by Beck [24] concerns the discrepancy between managers’ way of expressing gratitude and employees’ preferences—it emerges that the most common medium used and desired is oral, one-to-one communication. A discrepancy is manifested in monetary bonuses—employees do prefer this kind of gratitude expression right after the verbal modality, but on the other hand managers rarely apply this method of gratification [24].

Based on these results we can assume that managers and employees do not share the same meaning of gratitude; this is the case for different punctuation events [25], which can in turn negatively affects social interactions.

Recent research studies analyzed gratitude in the workplace and its effects on work life, for example Fehr, Fulmer, Awtrey, and Miller [26] identified three kinds of gratitude. The first episodic gratitude at the event level, where gratitude is perceived as a positive emotion and is differentiated by other positive emotions by the trigger event, the impact of the trigger on the self, and the prosocial action tendency [26] (p. 367). The second type is persistent gratitude, which is the individual level of gratitude meant as a constant attitude recurring in different contexts. The collective gratitude represents the third type. This is at the organizational level and it is defined as persistent gratitude shared by the members of an organization [26] (p. 369). The authors stated that organizational gratitude could be fostered by focused interventions undertaken by the Human Resource division.

In line with this classification, our attention is directed to episodic, persistent, and collective gratitude; they are relevant and measurable in an organizational context, thus highlighting the fact that gratitude is a multidimensional construct, as other authors have already stated [27,28].

All of the above-mentioned literature confirmed the statement made by Emmons in 2003 [29] regarding the relevant role of gratitude relating to organizational success, since it is a positive dimension able to improve well-being and organizational climate [29], resulting in a healthy organization [7].

Our study is in line with previous work [30], being conducted in Italian public administrations, related to organizational gratitude, and with the aim of identifying how different types of gratitude are related to job satisfaction and performance.

2. Research Design

We decided to implement a triangulated methodology in order to enrich the data from a double point of view—qualitative and quantitative data together can depict a more comprehensive context [31]. According to the appropriateness paradigm [32], the choice of the method was decided in light of the specific multidimensional nature of the object of the study. The aim was to put together different data, informants, participants, and analyses.

The research conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki [33], and all ethical guidelines were followed as required for conducting human research, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study countries. According to the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP), at the time of the current study, a very general document was available, whose guidelines we have followed.

A discourse and an interpretative analysis were performed in line with the grounded theory approach [34] and with the traditional exploration of metaphors and actions in the text.

The qualitative part was realized with the elaboration of a gratitude diary at work: a small sample of employees from several Italian Public Administrations were voluntary invited to participate. They were asked to fill in the diary for ten working days, following the instructions reported daily; in line with previous considerations regarding the participants commitment [35] we decided to limit the amount of questions and the participants’ efforts.

Gratitude lists or diaries were already used in past studies [36] and they turned out to be effective techniques to enhance individual well-being; however, it has to be specified that it was not a work related intervention and participants were asked to simply list to up to five reasons to be grateful for within that day.

Differently, the Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) applied by Nezlek [37] is a diary experience; in fact, in this case participants completed daily questionnaires so that the researcher could perceive their real thoughts, feelings, and work context. The author investigated and confirmed the relation between gratitude and organizational citizenship behavior at a personal level.

Diary studies in organizational research have been recently investigated by some scholars [38], highlighting their relevance when studying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors within the natural work context, as well as characteristics of the work situation, which may fluctuate on a daily basis [38] (p. 80).

The quantitative part has been implemented through the administration of an online ad hoc questionnaire, with which we meant to verify the relations among different types of gratitude and individual and collective dimensions. In particular, the main hypothesis was that dispositional, collective, and relational gratitude could foster both job performance and job satisfaction.

2.1. Gratitude at Work: Qualitative Evidences

2.1.1. Research Questions

The exploratory phase of the research began with two research questions:

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Which is the most common type of gratitude frequently expressed and perceived by public administration employees?

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How do workers express gratitude in the workplace?

In line with the above-mentioned literature, our aim was to expand the knowledge concerning gratitude in the workplace and to confirm some research hypotheses with statistical analyses.

2.1.2. Data Collection

We provided participants with a diary that had five blank spaces per day to be filled in by handwriting; the structure was as follows:

(1)

Overall my working day has been…

(2)

Today I am grateful for…

(3)

Concerning the above grateful reasons, for how many do you actually express explicit thanks? How did you do?

(4)

Does anyone express thanks for something in this working day?

(5)

Additional comments…

2.1.3. Results

We had nine completed diaries to analyze and we decided to apply a bottom up analysis according to a grounded theory perspective [34]. In line with this approach, we identified some key patterns originated by frequent participant’s comments, creating a categorical tree in order to organize and interpret our qualitative results.

Labels were mostly related to the three sections requested in the diary, and the three identified levels were as follows:

(a)

the expressed gratitude: according to the participant’s opinions it can be felt towards employers, colleagues, customers, oneself, nobody, the work environment, or toward the diary itself;

(b)

the way gratitude is expressed: it can be direct (verbal or non-verbal), indirect, and unexpressed.

(c)

the way gratitude can be received: there is a formal manner similar to a social practice; there is the real gratitude expressed through concrete behavior; lastly, there can be the expected but not received gratitude.

The most frequent kind of gratitude cited by participants was the gratitude toward colleagues, with 33 occurrences, for example citing the help to perform a task. The related method of expressing gratitude is direct and verbal; participants declare hat they said thanks in most cases and sometimes with a smile.

Concerning the most frequent kind of received gratitude, there were 12 occurrences for real gratitude, such as psychological support.

It is worth noting that there were 25 occurrences for gratitude expressed toward self; in more specific terms, participants congratulated themselves for a good job having been carried out.

An unexpected type of gratitude was the one toward the diary, even if there were just 4 occurrences; this means that writing the diary was, at the same time, a way to collect data for the research and a sort of intervention in itself. For example, one participant declared: Today I am grateful to this diary, because for the first time it seems to me that there is an argument in the office other than football.

Another relevant aspect that was inferred from the diaries was related to formal gratitude: some participants stated that in most cases, gratitude is expressed as a social automatic practice, so it is hard to define if it is a real and sincere feeling or a sort of due behavior.

2.2. The Working Outcomes of Gratitude: A Quantitative Analysis

The three dimensions of gratitude that we measured are dispositional, collective, and relational gratitude. Dispositional gratitude is defined as a personal tendency to notice and appreciate the positive in the world [1], so it is a very personal trait, dependent on individual attitudes and experiences.

Collective gratitude is experienced by employees toward the organization; according to Akgün, Erdil, Keskin, and Muceldilli [39], collective gratitude is defined as a collective emotional state referring to benefits that employees intentionally receive from management; this is described as a positive but temporary state. In this case, the social and shared dimensions make this kind of gratitude part of the organizational culture and identity.

Perceived or relational gratitude is the one received from customers, such as clients or patients [40]; it highlights that the relation with customers can also be a source of positive emotions other than stress. The relationship between public organizations’ employees and customers is based on reciprocity; there is a delicate balance, so that a customer complaint can negatively affect workers’ satisfaction and performance [30].

In order to test the simultaneous effects of the different kinds of gratitude on both job satisfaction and job performance, we have hypothesized a serial mediation model (Figure 1). In the figure, all of the possible relations are graphically represented.

We were interested in testing an additive effect of the dispositional, collective, and relational gratitude on both job satisfaction and job performance. Therefore, the relationship between dispositional gratitude and the outcomes, job satisfaction, and job performance should be smaller when the other two types of gratitude are included in the model than when they are not.

2.2.1. Measures

We elaborated an ad hoc questionnaire for the quantitative part of the study, aimed at evaluating several types of gratitude, job satisfaction and job performance. In particular, the following scales have been used:

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Job satisfaction was measured with the two items scale [41]. For example, participants rated on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”, the following statement: “in general I am satisfied with my job”. The Cronbach α was 0.886.

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Job performance was evaluated with the two items scale [42], which provides a self-evaluation of job performance. An item was: “I achieved all my job goals in the last six months”; participants indicated their agreement or disagreement on a 5-point Likert scale. The Cronbach α was 0.513.

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Dispositional gratitude was evaluated with the Gratitude Questionnaire GQ-6 [21], using the Italian translation and validation by Caputo [43]. Cronbach α = 0.765. The items were scored on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”; a sample item was: “I have so much in life to be thankful for”.

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The collective gratitude was measured with the collective gratitude scale elaborated by Akgün, Erdil, Keskin, and Muceldilli [39]. Eleven items were scored on a 5-point Likert scale rating agreement or disagreement; the reliability was 0.935. A sample item was: “We are grateful to our firm for encouraging us to participate in organizational decision making”.

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The perceived gratitude scale [44] measured the employees’ perception of customers gratitude, which can be also defined as relational gratitude. There were 12 items to rate on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “completely false” to “completely true”; the reliability was 0.892. An example item was: “The customers trusted in my competencies”.

2.2.2. Sample

Participants were mostly invited through social media (LinkedIn and Facebook) to voluntary participate and to fill in the online questionnaire, so the applied sampling method was snowballing. We decided to limit our sample to public administration workers in order to depict a specific organizational context, which is useful as a comparison term for future investigations.

The research conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki in 1995 (as revised in Edinburgh 2000), and all ethical guidelines were followed as required for conducting human research, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study countries. According to the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP), at the time of the current study, a very general document was available, whose guidelines we followed. We did not ask for written consent, since it was an online questionnaire on a voluntary basis.

The sample was composed of 116 workers of public administrations, 46 males, and 93 females; Mage (mean age) = 48.23, SD (standard deviation) = 8.34. However, only 96 participants completed the whole questionnaire (and were considered for the analysis).

2.2.3. Results

Certain qualitative results represented the starting point for the quantitative analysis. More specifically, we were interested in investigating the role of the gratitude expressed towards colleagues or employer. Before testing the serial mediation model, we observed the correlation table (

Table 1. Correlations and descriptive analyses of the scales.

	1	2	3	4	5		M	SD	N	Skewness	Kurtosis
1 JP	1						6.962	1.734	96	−0.774	1.495
2 RG	0.222 *	1					48.81	7.021	87	−0.434	0.250
3 DG	0.275 **	−0.051	1				26.37	5.154	96	−0.316	−0.521
4 CG	0.338 **	0.307 **	0.116	1			36.38	12.521	96	−0.006	−0.589
5 JS	0.530 **	0.421 **	0.149	0.534 **	1		7.55	1.938	96	−0.761	0.491

Note: JP = job performance; RG = relational gratitude; DG = dispositional gratitude; CG = collective gratitude; JS = job satisfaction. M = mean; SD = standard deviation; N = numerosity of the sample. * = p < 0.05; ** = p < 0.01.

); it partly fosters the hypothesized relations, which are significant at p < 0.01. In addition, we controlled the distributive qualities of our sample, which is satisfactory for all the used scales (Table 1).

In order to perform the mediation analysis, a SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) macro called PROCESS (PROCESS is an observed variable OLS and logistic regression path analysis modeling tool for SPSS and SAS), described by Preacher and Hayes [45], was used, incorporating the traditional approach (for example the Sobel test), the bootstrap approach, and the approach developed by Baron and Kenny to quantify the indirect effects of the predictor on the dependent variable [46]. In this study, the use of confidence intervals of the bootstrap method was necessary to avoid problems relating to the limited size of the sample, as already highlighted by Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes [47].

The tested serial mediation model is represented in Figure 2, where only the significant relations are reported; more specifically, collective gratitude does not have a direct relation with job performance, nor the dispositional gratitude with the relational gratitude.

There was a significant indirect effect of dispositional gratitude on job satisfaction and job performance through collective and relational gratitude: 0.30, CI (confidence interval) (0.98, 0.51). In fact, zero is not in the 95% confidence interval, and the indirect effect is significantly different from zero at p < 0.05.

3. Results Discussion and Conclusions

According to our sample, as can be seen from the qualitative analysis, the most common type of expressed gratitude was toward colleagues, and the most common received type was from customers. This latter evidence seems to disconfirm the common stereotype concerning public administrations about the stressful relationship with external customers, so the systematic relationship with customers could promote a healthy working environment [30].

Another point is related to the parallelism between working life and personal life: in both cases, perceived and expressed gratitude can positively affect life and job satisfaction. With regard to the specific relationship between gratitude and job satisfaction, it is worth noting that our results highlight the direct effect of both collective gratitude and relational gratitude on job satisfaction. A past study [23] found a significant relationship between the state of gratitude and job satisfaction. The main difference is that in our case the collective dimensions of gratitude are related and can affect an individual job dimension, such as satisfaction, highlighting how these dimensions are strictly entangled.

There are, of course, some limitations of the study. Concerning the sample, we had a small convenience sample of homogeneous workers, not allowing us to generalize the data; however, on the other hand it could be an interesting future perspective to test our model on a wider sample of different workers, implementing what was suggested by Bockerman and colleagues [48] in terms of wages and work histories.

In addition, the estimates in our regression models may suffer from the omitted-variable bias, and in this sense, it would be interesting in future studies to test, for example, the role played by personality traits that are supposed to be correlated with the dependent variables used in the analyses. Moreover, the job performance measure employed in this study provided only a partial inspection of the construct, because it is a self-reported rating; it would be interesting in the future to collect data concerning objective performance.

The cross-sectional evaluation is a main limitation as well, but on the other hand it allows us to replace the study with a longitudinal perspective and test the effect of the diary as an intervention.

Indeed, some participants confirmed the idea that the diary itself can be an intervention rather than simply a qualitative research method. This could be the first premise to design training experiences oriented toward gratitude education and development at every level of an organization, meant as training for the expression, recognition, and perception of gratitude in the workplace. Actually, gratitude training may be seen as an innovative practical policy to be implemented.

We can imagine how a sort of gratitude education could be implemented from school levels in order to promote a wellbeing culture based on positive attitudes and behaviors, just as other scholars have already shown in Australia [49].

As already stated by some scholars [1], there is a clear link between gratitude and wellbeing, and there are several conditions and variables that can affect individual wellbeing. For example, in the recent economic crisis, which spread around the world from 2008 onward, has received scarce attention as a variable able to affect the individual health related to work [50,51]. According to Giorgi and colleagues, organizations should foster positive emotions in crisis periods, and positive management could relieve the employees’ crisis perception, and in turn positively affect their health. It is possible to hypothesize that gratitude behaviors toward employees could have a mediation role in addition to the social support, which was already verified in previous work [50]. On the other hand, there could be a bias effect—employees who perceive less uncertainty related to their employability could manifest a forced gratitude toward their organizations.

However, the strategic role of gratitude in Human Resource Management is evident. Gratitude has a direct effect on improving the organizational climate and contributes to enhancing individual well-being and reducing negative emotions in the workplace, such as rancor and envy. It is also a key-resource to promote worker efficiency and productivity to improve organizational performance in strategic management of human capital [5]

It would also seem that collective gratitude could promote organizational resilience, which is most likely to occur in organizations when employees see a direct link between the organization and their personal growth [26]. This aspect of resilience is directly associated with employees’ shared gratitude for developmental opportunities for personal growth, and interpersonal trust in organizations’ HR systems. As far as we are concerned, the originality of this study is represented by the simultaneous evaluation of different kinds of gratitude as predictors of both job satisfaction and job performance, which is a valuable systematic point of view in the frame of positive psychology and of psychology of sustainability.

Moreover, the applied mixed-method provides a different point of view on the topic and reflects the inner nature of the discipline. Indeed, occupational and organizational psychology has to produce an impact on the observed reality; we believe that in this case, the diary represented a real experience able to produce concrete effects able to be collected and analyzed.

From our point of view, the fact that the research opens up several new investigations and research questions is a strong practical implication.

The qualitative results obtained by the diaries tell us that the definition of gratitude can be very subjective. For example, a participant associated gratitude with the feeling of trust, so it should be relevant to depict a clear and unified definition of the concept in every single organization as a premise of gratitude training.

Moreover, it could be interesting to classify the kind of nonverbal gratitude received and expressed, for example, participants often cited a smile or a mutual glance; this suggestion is in line with previous work [24] concerning the different meanings of gratitude between employees and managers. Therefore, further studies are also needed in order to explore different points of view—the management interpretation and the customers perception of gratitude.

Two employees implicitly considered two different dimensions of gratitude: the expected but not received gratitude, and the gratitude that would have been expressed. There may be other future dimensions to evaluate regarding the relative negative emotions or regrets.

Planning and implementing gratitude training can produce a sort of virtuous circle that fosters collective gratitude toward management, also positively affecting the learning climate. Past studies have already identified a positive relationship between the learning climate and job performance in a public administration context [52], and we think that a good climate in terms of gratitude can nurture this kind of relation. Gratitude could, in this vein, promote the process of Harmonization in the job context, fostering the construction of a positive relationship with parts of self and with others, at the group and at the community levels, as suggested by the psychology of sustainability and harmonization [8].

Finally, there is another recent and partly unexplored issue related to the predictors of job satisfaction—the presence and the communication of social media policies in an organization could affect job commitment and job satisfaction [53]. It seems to us that the digital revolution affecting our life is also transforming several psychological dimensions of work life, therefore we imagine that the dimensions of both collective and relational gratitude could be affected by social media policies, e.g., whether employees perceive something as a violation of their digital privacy, and also how expressed gratitude could be affected in a negative way.

In order to sum up the main findings and the contribution of our study, we can state that the serial mediation model has been validated, showing that individual dispositional gratitude, gratitude that employees express toward the organization, and the employees’ perceived gratitude of external customers are all predictors of both job satisfaction and job performance. The simultaneous measure of three types of gratitude is the main contribution of this work; the qualitative results, derived from the diary analysis, are another strong contribution because of their explorative aim. We believe that the suggestions raised by the qualitative analysis are open to a series of new research questions.