Helping as an Opportunity and Risk: An Alternative Side to Gratitude in Co-Worker Dyads

Purpose: As workplaces and relationships evolve with increasing complexity, co-worker dynamics have become a key concern for HR managers and scholars. An important yet overlooked aspect of co-worker dynamics is gratitude. This paper adopts a relationship-specific conceptualization of gratitude and explores its influence on prosocial behaviors within co-worker dyads. The proposed model also suggests structural-relational factors under which these relationships are affected. Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual paper draws insights from personal relationships to consider an alternative side of gratitude's prosocial action tendencies, thereby highlighting two: risk-oriented and opportunity-oriented. These assumptions are then situated within the affect theory of social exchange to predict gratitude's influence on prosocial behaviors within co-worker dyads. Findings: The proposed model illuminates the importance of studying relationship-specific gratitude within co-worker relations by illustrating its effects on two types of prosocial action tendencies \textendash opportunity-oriented and risk-oriented and varying prosocial behaviors (from convergent to divergent). Structural-relational factors, such as positional and physical distance between co-workers, are considered to affect these relationships. Originality/value: While the study of gratitude in the workplace is emerging, little research has examined its influence on the nature of prosocial behaviors within co-worker relations. This paper advances the notion that gratitude serves an adaptive function in co-worker dyads, thereby highlighting the risk-oriented and opportunity-oriented continuum, and its implications for the type and scope of prosocial behaviors exchanged. \textcopyright 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.