Grateful Beneficiaries and Proud Benefactors: A Moderated Mediation Model Relating Supervisors' Gratitude Expression to Employees' Organizational Citizenship Behavior
type: CreativeWork
description: Few organizational researchers have considered examining gratitude or pride—much less both simultaneously. In the present study, two complementary emotion theories (i.e., affective events theory and broaden-and-build theory) are integrated in an examination of the prosocial consequences of supervisors’ gratitude expression, employees’ authentic and hubristic pride experiences, and employees’ narcissism in a large construction company in China. Results from the analyses of the moderated mediation model pathways indicated that most of the proposed relationships were nonsignificant. Supervisors’ gratitude expression predicted employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) but did not predict employees’ authentic or hubristic pride. Employees’ hubristic pride—but not authentic pride—predicted employees’ OCB, but neither authentic nor hubristic pride mediated the relationship between supervisors’ gratitude expression and employees’ OCB. Additionally, employees’ narcissism did not function as a moderator variable in the moderated mediation model. Theoretical and practical implications and future directions are discussed.
abstract: Few organizational researchers have considered examining gratitude or pride—much less both simultaneously. In the present study, two complementary emotion theories (i.e., affective events theory and broaden-and-build theory) are integrated in an examination of the prosocial consequences of supervisors’ gratitude expression, employees’ authentic and hubristic pride experiences, and employees’ narcissism in a large construction company in China. Results from the analyses of the moderated mediation model pathways indicated that most of the proposed relationships were nonsignificant. Supervisors’ gratitude expression predicted employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) but did not predict employees’ authentic or hubristic pride. Employees’ hubristic pride—but not authentic pride—predicted employees’ OCB, but neither authentic nor hubristic pride mediated the relationship between supervisors’ gratitude expression and employees’ OCB. Additionally, employees’ narcissism did not function as a moderator variable in the moderated mediation model. Theoretical and practical implications and future directions are discussed.
author: Jimenez, William Peter
keywords: Affective events theory, Broaden-and-build theory, Gratitude expression, Narcissism, Organizational citizenship, behavior (OCB), Pride, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Theory
date published: 2018-07-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:34:11Z
provider: Old Dominion University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Old Dominion University