Thank You for Being Fair: Can Gratitude Explain Why Justice Perceptions Enhance Work Engagement?Abstract: Social exchange theory has been extensively used to explain the motivational effects of employee justice perceptions (Colquitt, et al., 2013). Moreover, emotions are at the center of most justice-related experiences and social exchanges at work. Yet there is still a dearth of research on emotions in the justice literature. In this study, we integrate the social exchange perspective with research on discrete positive emotions and examine whether the specific emotion of gratitude mediates the relationship between distributive, procedural and interactional justice, and work engagement. Furthermore, we also develop the boundaries around these relationships by examining the moderating role of promotion focus. We test our hypothesized model in a two-wave study based on a sample of 241 full-time working professionals. Results show that even after controlling for work engagement at time 1, each justice dimension – distributive, procedural, and interactional justice – has indirect effects on work engagement at time 2 through the emotion of gratitude. Moderated-mediation analyses indicate that for each justice dimension, indirect effects via gratitude are significant only for low promotion focus employees. Several important theoretical and practical implications of our study are discussed.Length: 3 pages

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