Search results

Although managers agree that showing appreciation to their employees is important, many do not know how to do so effectively. Languages of Appreciation have been identified that uniquely convey that the recipient is valued when appreciation is expressed in the “language” they prefer. Moreover, a wide range of specific actions can be effective within a given appreciation language. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the top ten action items within each language of appreciation to discover the actions preferred most frequently by employees.

Of the over 200,000 individuals who have completed the Motivating by Appreciation Inventory, approximately 1% of respondents were randomly selected to represent each primary language (Words of Affirmation N = 1,000, Acts of Service N = 500, Quality Time N = 500 and Tangible Gifts N = 300). Respondents’ action item preferences were then tallied.

Numerous themes were identified, along with the most desired acts of appreciation within each language: Words of Affirmation: acknowledge when I have handled a difficult situation well; Acts of Service: offer to do some menial tasks that will allow me to focus on higher priorities for me; Quality Time: go to lunch together and not talk about business issues; and Tangible Gifts: gift cards (visa gift card or to favorite store/restaurant).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to report on the specific actions most desired by employees within their preferred appreciation languages. The results can help inform actions that are most likely to be successful in showing appreciation to colleagues in the workplace.

Recent reports suggest Singapore employees especially value practical assistance in resolving work-related issues. As such, this study explored whether the appreciation language Acts of Service was chosen as the Primary Language of appreciation by Singapore employees at a higher frequency than U.S. employees.

Nine hundred sixty-seven Singapore employees completed the Motivating By Appreciation (MBA) Inventory, which assesses individuals’ preferred ways of being shown appreciation. A sample of 921 U.S. employees was created from the general MBA Inventory population that matched the Singapore employees group on age, gender and work setting.

Acts of Service (39 per cent) was virtually equivalent with Words of Affirmation (37 per cent) as the most preferred Language of Appreciation by the Singapore employees, whereas U.S. employees preferred Words of Affirmation at a significantly higher rate (40 per cent) than Acts of Service (26 per cent).

Further research is needed before the findings should be generalized to all East Asian cultures, and additional research is needed before conclusions should be made regarding specific cultural differences in action items preferred.

Workplace leaders in Singapore need to be aware that understanding the work issues and providing practical assistance is highly valued by their employees and communicates appreciation as much as verbal and written praise. This emphasis on the desire for practical assistance is a cultural difference in comparison to their U.S. counterparts. Yet, in both cultures, the leader-employee interpersonal working relationship is a key factor that enables organizations to grow and work through changes successfully.

This is the first study to compare preferred appreciation languages of Singapore and US employees, and report Singapore employees especially value practical assistance in resolving work-related issues.

This paper aims to present the process, progress and validity of the Motivating By Appreciation Inventory and the Appreciation at Work training.

Several methods were utilized such as surveys, pre- and post-interviews and data from the inventory results.

For the Motivating by Appreciation Inventory, the results showed that the results are consistent and stable over time. For the Appreciation at Work training, the results of surveys before and after the training showed high levels of positive change.

When individuals feel appreciated and valued for their contributions in the workplace, good results follow, including increased employee engagement, less staff turnover, higher customer satisfaction ratings and the organization grows in its sense of purpose. The Motivating by Appreciation Inventory and Appreciation at Work Training are unique tools that help organizations grow in employee appreciation.

Research demonstrates that feeling appreciated in the workplace increases employee engagement, reduces turnover, and increases profitability. Despite the fact that people differ in how they feel most appreciated, no work to date has explored the impact of age differences on appreciation preferences. The purpose of this paper is to determine if Millennial workers vs their older colleagues differ in the manner they prefer to be shown appreciation.

From 2014 to 2018, 62,156 workers completed the Motivating by Appreciation Inventory (White, 2011) and provided age, gender, and work industry information. Each person’s primary and the least valued languages of appreciation in the workplace were identified. Four age groups were created of approximately equal numbers: ≤29-, 30-39-, 40-49-, and 50+ years old.

Words of Affirmation was the most prominent primary language of appreciation across all four age groups and most pronounced in the oldest group (50+). The ≤29-year-old group valued Quality Time more and Acts of Service less than the other three age groups. There were no age group differences in the least valued language of appreciation.

The results suggest that supervisors and staff members must be mindful to include opportunities for quality time interactions with Millennial workers, as well as provide words of affirmation, to show appreciation for their work.

This is the first study to assess age differences in preferred ways to be shown appreciation in the workplace.

Given that assessment tools based upon the Jung/Myers personality framework and the Motivating By Appreciation Inventory are used by tens of thousands of workplaces, questions have arisen regarding their interrelatedness. The purpose of the current study is to assess the relationship between TypeCoach personality type and Language of Appreciation.

In total, 300 participants took both the MBA Inventory and TypeCoach Verifier. Each person’s primary Language of Appreciation and the summary scores for each of the four languages (Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time and Tangible Gifts) were calculated. Each participant’s TypeCoach data were scored as 1 of 16 traditional four-letter types (i.e. INTJ, ENFP), as well as dichotomously coded as extraversion (vs not), sensing (vs not), thinking (vs not) and judging (vs not). Logistic regression and chi-square tests were conducted to assess the relationships between primary Language of Appreciation and TypeCoach Verifier.

None of the analyses yielded a statistically significant relationship between Language of Appreciation and TypeCoach scores (all ps > 0.05).

This study is the first to assess the relationship between Jung/Myers personality types and languages of appreciation. It appears that personality type and preferred ways of receiving appreciation are independent, but potentially complimentary constructs. This study provides suggestions on how to best combine the tools to create an engaging work environment.

Building on the “Stress-as-Offense-to-Self” theory, this study investigates appreciation as a predictor of job satisfaction over time, mediated by subjective success and feelings of resentment towards one's organization.

Analyses are based on a three-wave study with two-month time intervals, with a sample of 193 employees from six Swiss organizations.

Double mediation by subjective success and feelings of resentment was confirmed; no mediation was found in a reversed mediation model. Results highlight the importance of appreciation for employees' feelings of success and job satisfaction, but also for affect related to the organization as a whole.

Organizations should recognize the role of appreciation in satisfaction, affective reactions toward the organization, and information about one's standing. Appreciation can be expressed in multiple ways; it not only increases job satisfaction but also helps employees to validate their judgments about their own performance.

Appreciation is a promising resource for employee well-being. The present study is one of few focusing on appreciation as a resource in its own right, rather than as part of broader constructs, such as social support. Our results not only confirm the importance of appreciation but also shed light on mechanisms through which it may exert its influence. They complement a multilevel analysis based on the same data showing an association of appreciation with different indicators of well-being on the interpersonal as well as the intrapersonal level.

Businesses are spending billions of dollars on recognition rewards with the intent of boosting employee engagement, job satisfaction, and ultimately, their bottom line. However, employee engagement is at an all-time low. The purpose of this study was designed to take a step back to understand if there are demographic differences that influence personal preferences for tangible gifts as their preferred language of appreciation and of those who prefer to receive gifts, what types of gifts are most valued.

This study compared the demographics of those who selected tangible gifts as their primary (N  =  8,811), secondary (N = 14,827) or least valued (N  = 108,586) language of appreciation (motivating by appreciation inventory, White, 2011). From those with tangible gifts as their primary language of appreciation, 500 were randomly selected to code their open-ended suggestions for a preferred gift.

There are no important factors across the demographics of gender, age or work setting that influence whether individuals are more or less likely to choose tangible gifts as their primary, secondary or least valued language of appreciation. Respondents identified gift cards, additional paid time off and gifts related to desired personal experiences as their top gift choices.

When giving gifts to colleagues, discovering individuals’ personal preferences (favorite store, restaurant, ticketed event, food, drink and lunch option) is more likely to result in a gift that “hits the mark” in showing appreciation to the recipient.

An impassioned debate has been on in the academic and policy circles regarding the undervaluation of the renminbi (RMB) yuan. This issue has emerged as one of the most contentious and thought‐provoking in the discipline of international finance. That it is undervalued is widely acknowledged. With China's emergence as an economic superpower of the future, this debate no doubt has considerable merit and ramifications. This article looks sang froid at its undervaluation, 2005 revaluation and when should the RMB yuan be further appreciated. As the Chinese economy picks up further growth momentum, the currency appreciation is expected to accelerate. This article also examines the implications of further appreciation of the RMB yuan on the Chinese and Asian economies as well as its plausible impact over the bilateral imbalances between China and US economy.

The purpose of the study is to test how land owners respond to the appreciation of land values in the presence of speculation. This paper introduces the concept of “land hoarding,” which is land owners' response to higher land prices by selling more land up to a point beyond which accelerated land price appreciation would lead to land hoarding. Specifically, this paper examines the effect of land value appreciation higher than the opportunity cost of selling the land (measured by treasury‐bill (T‐bill) rate) on land sale and land hoarding.

A theoretical framework is developed to understand the demand for agricultural land retention with and without speculation, the former informing land hoarding behavior. A linear regression model was introduced and estimated using ordinary least square (OLS) method. A panel data model and analysis is also introduced, and following appropriate model selection tests, a fixed effect panel data estimation method is implemented. Data from 48 states, spanning from 1950 to 2004, are utilized.

An inverse relationship is found between the rate of land value appreciation and the demand for land by farmers, suggesting that the standard direct relationship between appreciation and land supplied to development holds. However, the additional finding of an inverse relationship between the rate of land value appreciation in excess of the risk‐free rate of return and agricultural land development confirms the existence of an identifiable speculative demand component that involves land hoarding.

To the extent to which the findings are broadly applicable, one policy implication is that enhanced land retention can be achieved through market mechanisms. For example, the notion that reduced T‐bill rates can actually result in market triggered land preservation is an interesting policy related finding. Equally interesting is the notion that policies that can trigger increases in the rate of appreciation of farmland may also potentially result in the agricultural hoarding of land. Obviously, enhanced profitability in agriculture due to programs targeting viability, commodity price support, reduction of regulation or market expansion programs can potentially affect land retention.

This paper introduces the “land hoarding hypothesis.” High rates of land appreciation can be expected to signal that holding the land may yield better returns than selling it, suggesting that if rates of land appreciation become significantly high enough, farmers may begin to hoard land, not sell it, to maximize long‐term returns. This concept can be valuable to market‐based agricultural land retention programs at the urban fringe. By linking speculative behavior, land demand and existence of a hoarding behavior under some conditions, this paper adds value and originality to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to analyze the role of exchange rate appreciation expectation in trade invoicing from the perspective of importers, then empirically analyze it using Japanese export data.

Constructing a theoretical model of importer behavior by analyzing the importer's utility function under an assumption such as “menu cost”, then using econometric method to justify the theoretical model's finding.

It was found that under the assumption of “menu cost”, risk neutrality and price rigidity, there are three directions of appreciation expectation's effect: increasing, unchanged and decreasing theoretically; but under common condition, only a large appreciation expectation will cause an importer to reduce the use of exporter's currency, and the role is constricted by exporters' bargaining capacity. The empirical results of Yen's use in Japan's exports justifies the model's conclusion and shows that commercial pressure and political events are the most important signals to form large appreciation expectation.

This paper has important policy implications for Renminbi (RMB)'s exchange rate policy under the context of RMB internationalization, in order to promote RMB's use in exports; China should control the large appreciation expectation of RMB and the best way is to rigorously tackle trade deficit with US and European countries, and to eliminate the explicit appreciation signal.

The paper analyzes the role of exchange rate appreciation in trade invoicing theoretically and empirically for the first time; and reasonably explains the development of currency invoicing in Japanese exports and contemporary Chinese exports, as well as having important policy implications for Chinese exchange rate policy.