Impact of Received Leader Gratitude on Followers’ Relationship Perceptions and Work Behaviors

Although leader gratitude is highly praised and advocated in the public media, scholars of leadership research have paid limited attention to whether, how, and when received leader gratitude may reinforce followers’ perceptions of relationships with their leaders. Integrating the moral foundations of gratitude and the theory of exchange and communal relationships, I develop a theoretical model that explores the influence of received leader gratitude on followers’ relationship perceptions and work behaviors. To highlight the potential asymmetrical power in leader-follower relationships, I propose that perceived leader power plays a critical role in the impact of leader gratitude. I also consider servant leadership as a moderator to emphasize the importance of leaders’ expression-behavior consistency. The research model was tested in two studies—one survey study with 252 employees from a large company and an experimental study with 161 online workers. The results of these two studies reveal that received leader gratitude is positively related to followers’ task performance via exchange relationship perceptions, as well as to helping coworkers via communal relationship perceptions. Moreover, perceived leader power, but not servant leadership, strengthens such indirect and positive effects of received leader gratitude. This research contributes both to the research on gratitude and leadership, and may stimulate future investigation of leader gratitude.