Marketing 2015 anzmac conference

Abstract

This study aims to demonstrate that employee gratitude plays an important role in the understanding of how employees’ perceived organisational support can enhance employee affective commitment and customer orientation. To achieve this, we synthesise knowledge from internal market orientation and psychology literature and expand the scope of ‘affect theory of positive emotion’ to develop an ‘Employee Gratitude Model’ (EGM). Self-administered surveys were conducted using panel data. Our research suggests that firms should invest energy and resources to design organisational support programmes that stimulate gratitude in their employees in order to build strong employee–organisation and employee-customer relationship. This paper is one of the first to conceptualise and examine the emotion of gratitude in the context of employeeorganisation relationship and test its role in enhancing key favourable organisational outcomes.