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The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential mediating role of employee engagement in the relationship between gratitude and subjective well-being (SWB) of employees working in the information technology (IT) sector in India. The study investigated a moderated mediation model for gratitude and SWB, treating employee engagement as a mediator and gender as a moderator.

Data was collected from 162 professionals working IT sector in India. Process Macro, AMOS and IBM SPSS 22 were used to analyze the mediation and moderation effects.

The results depicted that employee engagement fully mediates the positive association between gratitude practice and the SWB of employees as well as the demographic variable; gender also demonstrated a full moderation effect between them.

This research may be one of the few studies from the Indian context that explore whether gratitude practiced by employees working in the IT sector can play a significant role in impacting their SWB. Past research models had not introduced employee engagement’s indirect impact on the examined variables.

A growing challenge for organizations is to keep their brand relevant and connected to consumers. This can be achieved by connecting the consumer not only through conventional lines but also through means of developing emotional bonding, leading to brand gratitude. This study aims to develop a conceptual model by identifying a set of components and establishing a probable linkage between them for the development of brand gratitude.

A qualitative study involving three focus group discussions with industry experts was conducted to identify the brand elements that can help build a strong emotional connection between the brand and customers, leading to brand gratitude.

The study identified the different brand elements and their relative influence on building the consumer-brand emotional connection. These components were then incorporated into a conceptual model for creating a “Unique Emotional Connection” (UEC). The outcome of the UEC model is enhanced and long-lasting association of the brand through brand gratitude.

An integrated study to understand the different elements influencing customer-brand emotional connection is rare. Also, papers studying the role of gratitude in brand management are limited. This study has tried to address these gaps through a conceptual framework that can help marketing practitioners to develop a long-lasting customer-brand relationship.

Building on the broaden-and-build theory and incorporating a self-regulatory perspective, this study examines the relationship between trait gratitude and subjective career success and investigates the mediating roles of growth mindset of work and career network breadth.

Time-lagged data were collected in three waves from a sample of 314 employees in China. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings demonstrate that trait gratitude is positively related to SCS, mediated by growth mindset of work as an indicator of psychological resources and career network breadth as an indicator of social resources. Trait gratitude is more strongly associated with network breadth (i.e., social resources) than with growth mindset (i.e., psychological resources).

Organizations may find trait gratitude an applicable addition to the selection criteria during the recruitment process.

By identifying trait gratitude as an antecedent of SCS and revealing its underlying mechanisms, the current study points to a new perspective on the study of career success.

This study aims to create a more humane and responsible workplace, individuals’ gratitude and meaningfulness seem of utmost importance. This study is an effort to understand the role of gratitude intent of potential managers.

This study examines the psychological characteristic of business students in India. The researchers surveyed 333 Indian students as future managers. The collected data has been analysed with the Smart PLS 3 version to assess the formative-reflective scale by comparing model fit, measurement model and structural modelling.

The results establish that gratitude significantly affects the life satisfaction of future managers. Findings also show that materialism is negatively related to life satisfaction and meaningfulness. The importance–performance map analysis finding suggests that meaningfulness in life is a potential indicator of life satisfaction for the population studied.

Due to the limited research available on the psychological underpinnings in the Indian context, there is a massive value in examining how materialism and gratitude concurrently and distinctively predict meaning in life and the life satisfaction of future managers. This paper gives a formative explanation of the model consisted gratitude, materialism and meaningfulness in life on the life satisfaction of future managers. This study establishes the importance of meaningfulness of life in attaining life satisfaction for young managers.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between workplace toxicity and psychological capital (PsyCap). It also investigates the moderating role of gratitude in the toxicity–PsyCap link.

The study is based on explorative-cum-descriptive research design. The sample comprises 411 employees engaged in banking, insurance, IT, automobile and oil and gas companies. The collected data is explored for reliability, validity, multicollinearity and common method variance estimates. Also, the relationship between workplace toxicity and PsyCap and the moderating effect of gratitude are examined using structural equation modelling.

The findings report a negative association between toxicity and PsyCap. Also, the study concludes a significant moderating effect of gratitude. The study recommends the institutionalisation of a gratitude-based organisation to reduce the impact of workplace bullying and uncivil behaviour.

The study is based on primary data and one of the few studies that explore psychological capital as a dependent variable, which is influenced by toxic behaviours at work.

A growing literature shows that (integral) emotions arising in response to firm transgressions may influence consumer punishment. However, incidental emotions (which are unrelated to the decision at hand) can also be powerful drivers of consumer decision-making and could influence responses to firm transgressions. This paper aims to examine the role of incidental gratitude, as compared to incidental pride and a control condition, in shaping the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior toward a transgressing firm and the mediating role of self-righteousness in this regard.

Four experimental studies are conducted to examine the effect of gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, on the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior against a transgressing firm. Further, this research tests the underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of the predicted effect.

The results show that consumers experiencing gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, judge a questionable consumer behavior directed against a transgressing firm as less acceptable. These different emotion effects are found to be explained by self-righteousness. The findings also demonstrate that an apology by the firm attenuates the effect of emotions on consumer response toward the transgressing firm.

The present research contributes to the literature on consumer punishment by identifying the role of incidental emotions in determining self-righteousness and ethical judgments. The research focuses on and contrasts the effects of two specific positive emotions – gratitude and pride.

This paper offers managerial implications for firms involved in a transgression by highlighting the potential of gratitude. Notably, the findings of this research suggest that gratitude activation via marketing communications may help firms mitigate the negative effects of transgression events.

The present research provides a novel perspective on when and how positive emotions, such as gratitude and pride, can differentially and systematically influence ethical judgment toward a transgressing firm.

This paper aims to explore the moderating impact of four moderators, namely, retailer brand strength, customer’s perceived purchase regularity, gender and purchase channel (online and offline) on the relationship between relationship marketing investments (RMIs) and customer gratitude, and customer gratitude and customer loyalty. The context of research is the purchase of a high-involvement product by Indian customers.

This study adapts Huang RMIs-Gratitude-Loyalty model and empirically validates the associated hypotheses using structural equation modeling. Data is collected through the survey method.

The study (N = 385) results suggest a significant impact of preferential treatment and interpersonal communication investments on customer’s feeling of gratitude toward the retailer and, consequently, on loyalty. Purchase channel, gender and, to a lesser extent, customer perceived regularity each moderates the relationships between marketing investment and gratitude, and that between gratitude and loyalty; surprisingly, retailer brand is not a significant moderator.

Future research can factor in the impact of loyalty program on the proposed relationships.

This research offers helpful guidelines for retailers, especially for those who currently have a multichannel presence and invest or plan to invest in relationship marketing to obtain benefits from customer loyalty.

This investigation explores not only the relevance of RMIs–gratitude–loyalty model in the Indian retail context but also the influence of moderating variables on the retailers’ efforts of gaining consumer loyalty.

Informed by the broaden-and-build theory of emotions, this study aims to investigate the relationships between consumers’ motives and personal and social outcomes in access-based services (ABS). Further, drawing on territorial behaviour literature, the second goal of this research is to test the moderating effects of psychological ownership on the relationships between personal outcomes and consumer territorial behaviour.

This research comprises a quantitative online survey complemented by a qualitative interview study. The quantitative study employed an online consumer panel survey of 317 samples. Later, the qualitative study sought additional insights into the economic benefit motives and manifestation of territorial behaviour of bicycle-sharing users to enrich the results of quantitative study. The quantitative data were analysed using structural equation modelling, and the interviews were transcribed and analysed using an inductive and deductive thematic analysis.

The results indicated that specific motives significantly affected certain personal outcomes. Namely, economic benefit, enjoyment and reputation motives drove life satisfaction, while enjoyment, sustainability and social relationships promoted feelings of gratitude. Furthermore, life satisfaction positively affected consumer cooperation, helping other consumers and territorial behaviour. In contrast, feelings of gratitude had a positive relationship with cooperation and helping other consumers, but a negative one with territorial behaviour. Additional examination revealed that consumers’ psychological ownership of the shared bicycle in an ABS model moderated the effect of gratitude on consumer territorial behaviour.

This study offers and tests a model on ABS in the context of bicycle-sharing services. Thus, it presents avenues to test the model on other ABS, e.g. clothing or home sharing.

Managers in ABS can foster positive emotional states of gratitude and life satisfaction that will inevitably promote consumer cooperation and helping behaviour.

This study is among the first to propose and examine a model that tests the relationships between consumers’ motives and personal and social outcomes in ABS.

Benevolent leadership is a leadership style in which leaders show consideration for their employees' work and life. Empirical studies have shown inconsistent relationships between benevolent leadership and employees' voluntary behaviors. Therefore, this study examined benevolent leadership's mediating (gratitude) and moderating (trust) mechanisms.

Overall, 792 questionnaires were collected from Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) and continuing education students at a public university in Taiwan. The research model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis and the PROCESS module.

Benevolent leadership influenced three voluntary behaviors of employees directly and indirectly through enhanced gratitude. Emotional trust moderated the relationship between work care and employee gratitude such that the positive relationship was stronger for employees with higher emotional trust levels.

Benevolent leadership is an effective leadership style that cares about employees' work and lives, enhancing their gratitude and engagement in voluntary behaviors.

The mediating effect of gratitude and the moderating effect of trust provide a possible explanation for the inconsistent relationships between benevolent leadership and voluntary behaviors.

Nurses' work engagement is critical for the service quality of the hospital. Thus, investigation on the influencing factors of nurses' work engagement has become an important issue. This study addresses this issue by exploring the effect of daily family-to-work conflict (FWC) on next-day work engagement among Chinese nurses.

The theoretical model was tested using 555 experience sampling data from 61 nurses collected for 10 workdays in China.

Nurses' daily FWC is associated with their next-day ego depletion. Moreover, increased ego depletion ultimately reduces their next-day work engagement. In addition, a between-individual factor of frequency of perceived patient gratitude mitigates the effect of FWC on ego depletion and the indirect effect on work engagement via ego depletion.

This study is important to the management of health-care organizations as it carries significant implications for theory and practice toward understanding the influence of FWC among nurses. On the one hand, the authors apply the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as the overarching theoretical framework, which contributes to the authors’ understanding of how FWC impairs work engagement. On the other hand, the authors extend extant theoretical models of FWC by identifying the frequency of perceived patient gratitude as an important contextual factor that counteracts the negative effects of FWC among nurses. Moreover, organizations could encourage patients to express their gratitude to nurses by providing more channels, such as thank-you notes, to offer nurses some support for overcoming the destructive effect of FWC.