互惠感恩表达提升员工工作绩效

得到他人善待后，人们常常会通过各种方式表达感激之情，来自受恩方的感恩表达又进一步增强施恩者的亲社会动机与行为。然而，已有研究大多关注受恩方的感恩表达对对方（施恩方）的影响，较少关注对本人的影响。此外，组织情境下的实证研究也较为少见。鉴于此，本研究在组织情境下考察感恩表达如何影响员工本人的工作绩效。以一家企业的103名知识型员工为对象，调阅该企业某一年度全年的档案资料，获得了员工之间感恩表达的实际行为数据，以及员工的客观工作绩效。回归分析结果表明，员工的单向感恩表达行为不能显著预测工作绩效；而互惠感恩表达则显著正向预测工作绩效，互惠感恩表达所占比例越高，员工的工作绩效越高。

A smart thanks matters: Reciprocal gratitude expressions enhance employees' job performance

Gratitude is often expressed in verbal or non-verbal ways, by presenting gifts, or providing helps to others. While the recent research has indicated that beneficiaries’ gratitude expressions enhance benefactors’ motivations to maintain further interpersonal interactions and to behave pro-socially, little are known about the effects of gratitude expressions on beneficiaries themselves, or whether the effects can be generalized to the organizational context. To fill the gap, this study aimed to investigate the effect of gratitude expressions on employees’ job performance in the organizational setting. Based on the archival data from a professional service company, authors obtained objective job performance and actual gratitude expression behaviors of 103 employees. Results of series of regression analyses indicate that while gratitude expressions had little relation with job performance, and reciprocal gratitude expressions positively and significantly predicted job performance. Our findings were discussed in terms of its empirical and theoretical contributions to gratitude literature, and the practical implications in fostering organizational climate characteristic of gratitude and interpersonal recognition.