Received: 4 January 2018 Revised: 1 January 2019 Accepted: 10 January 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2354

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Are servant leaders appreciated? An investigation of how

relational attributions influence employee feelings of gratitude
and prosocial behaviors

Jiaqing Sun1 | Robert C. Liden1 | Linyi Ouyang2

1
Department of Managerial Studies,
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Summary
Illinois, U.S.A. Multisource data collected at three time phases were used in investigating when ser-
2
School of Business, Renmin University of
vant leadership elicits gratitude and then promotes prosocial behaviors. We tested a
China, Beijing, China
Correspondence
moderated mediation model, contending that relational attributions moderate the
Jiaqing Sun, Department of Managerial relationship between servant leadership and gratitude, and then gratitude sequentially
Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, 601 S
Morgan St., 2201 University Hall, Chicago,
predicts interpersonal citizenship behaviors and upward voice. As hypothesized, when
Illinois, U.S.A. employees do not highly rely on relational attributions for servant leadership, they
Email: jsun46@uic.edu
feel more gratitude and subsequently engage in more interpersonal citizenship behav-
Linyi Ouyang, School of Business, Renmin
University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Street, iors and upward voice than the employees who rely on relational attributions to
Haidian, Beijing, China. explain their interactions with the leader. The sequential indirect effect from servant
Email: ouyang01@ruc.edu.cn
leadership to upward voice via gratitude and then interpersonal citizenship behaviors
Funding information
Greenleaf scholars Program 2017 was significant when relational attributions are low rather than high.

KEY W ORDS

gratitude, organizational citizenship behavior, relational attributions, servant leadership, upward

voice

1 | I N T RO D U CT I O N to explore the way in which followers attribute the favorable treat-

Servant leadership—practiced by leaders who place their subordinates'
needs and interests before their own (Greenleaf, 1970)—is increasingly
gaining research attention (Eva, Mulyadi, Sendjaya, van Dierendonck,
& Liden, in press; Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn, & Wu, 2018; Liden,
Panaccio, Meuser, Hu, & Wayne, 2014). Because servant leaders place
a priority on providing need‐based support to followers in order to
assist them in reaching their full potential, followers in turn engage
in appropriate behaviors and make positive contributions in the work-
place (Greenleaf, 1970; Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014).
Although accumulating evidence has shown the influence of servant
leadership on employees' in‐role and extra‐role performance (Auxier,
2013; Choudhary, Akhtar, & Zaheer, 2013) and work attitudes
(Amadeo, 2008; Chu, 2008; Engelhart, 2012; Jenkins & Stewart,
2010), limited attention has been paid to the individual differences of
employees' affective and behavioral reaction to servant leaders (e.g.,
Liden, Wayne, Zhao, & Henderson, 2008; Meuser, Liden, Wayne, &
Henderson, 2011). Of specific interest in the current investigation is
ment they receive from servant leaders.
According to Greenleaf's (1970) seminal essay, a remarkable char-
acteristic that makes servant leadership different from other types of
leadership is servant leaders' selflessness (van Dierendonck, 2011;
Wong, Davey, & Church, 2007). This unique characteristic of servant
leadership challenges lay‐people's fundamental opinion of human
beings—that people are selfish (Dawkins, 1976). When employees per-
ceive that their leader shows sensitivity to their personal feelings,
demonstrates genuine concerns for their growth and success, satisfies
their work needs, and always puts them first (Liden et al., 2008; van
Dierendonck, 2011), employees may wonder why the leader does
these things without asking for an immediate payback. The answers
may vary from person to person and trigger different feelings and
reactions. We contend that a major force that drives employees'
explanations for the servant leadership bestowed upon them is the
degree to which they make relational attributions, defined as those
attributional explanations “made by a focal individual that locate the
cause of an event within the relationship that the individual has with

528 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job J Organ Behav. 2019;40:528–540.
SUN ET AL.
another person” (Eberly, Holley, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2011, p.732). For
example, if an employee interprets a leader's “serving” as being part of
her relationship with the leader, this employee may not interpret the
leader's personal help as being unique or special. In contrast, if another
employee feels that the leader's positive behaviors are not highly
dependent on their relationship, he may feel grateful to be working
with such a leader.
The feelings of gratitude of the second employee in the example
may be evoked by his interpretations of the leaders' special consider-
ation as selfless and unconditional. Gratitude is likely to be elicited
when another person has intentionally given something of value (Bart-
lett & DeSteno, 2006), without communicating the expectation of
repayment (Watkins, Scheer, Ovnicek, & Kolts, 2006). On the basis
of this definition, we contend that employees may feel grateful when
they interpret a servant leader's help as not grounded in their relation-
ship. In the present study, we specify the gratitude that may be
evoked by servant leadership as persistent gratitude, defined as “a sta-
ble tendency to feel grateful within a particular context” (Fehr, Fulmer,
Awtrey, & Miller, 2016, p. 363). Because servant leadership represents
employees' perceptions of leaders' consistent practice of helping and
supporting them based on their needs, employees who are working
with a servant leader have more opportunities to experience some
events that may evoke their feelings of gratitude on a daily basis. As
time passes, they may form a stable tendency of feeling grateful in
the workplace when they make relational attributions.
This stable tendency of feeling grateful may be further expressed
by employees when performing their daily work in the form of
prosocial behaviors (Fehr et al., 2016). Building upon previous
research on the positive relationship between gratitude and different
kinds of prosocial behaviors (e.g., helping, citizenship behaviors, and
conflict resolving behaviors; see meta‐analytic review by Ma, Tunney,
& Ferguson, 2017), the present study focuses on an underexplored
prosocial behavior in gratitude research—upward voice to the leader.
Upward voice is defined as “informal and discretionary communication
by an employee of ideas, suggestions, concerns, information about
problems, or opinions about work‐related issues to persons who might
be able to take appropriate action, with the intent to bring about
improvement or change” (Morrison, 2014, p. 174). Although upward
voice is motivated by the intentions of improving the situation, it is
unclear whether employees with high persistent gratitude are more
likely to engage in upward voice to the leader. Because gratitude is
positively correlated with job satisfaction (Lanham, Rye, Rimsky, &
Weill, 2012), the positive attitude toward the job may hinder the
grateful employees to identify issues and problems that need improve-
ment in the work environment. However, grateful employees also
have a high tendency to help coworkers in the workplace, gestures
that are also known as interpersonal organizational citizenship behaviors
(OCB‐I; Ehrhart, 2004). Within the process of helping coworkers,
grateful employees become aware of issues in the work place that
need to be addressed. For example, in providing help to a coworker,
the grateful employee may recognize that coworkers need to be pro-
vided with task‐specific training to enhance their performance.
Because servant leaders are adept at listening and acceptance
(Greenleaf, 1970), they create a safe environment (Schaubroeck,
Lam, & Peng, 2011) for the grateful employees to freely voice their
529
opinions and concerns (Chughtai, 2016) about the issues they find in
the day‐to‐day OCB‐Is directed toward coworkers.
In the present investigation conducted in an organizational con-
text, we integrate the recent addition of relational attributions (Eberly
et al., 2011) to attribution theory with research on the ways in which
emotion plays a part in organizations (Ashkanasy, 2003; Ashkanasy,
Humphrey, & Huy, 2017). Specifically, we explore when servant lead-
ership behaviors may evoke employees' persistent gratitude and then
foster their upward voice through daily OCB‐I. The purpose of the
current study is threefold: First, we explore followers' affective reac-
tions (i.e., gratitude) to servant leadership by taking the perspective
of followers' relational attributions. With this stance, we extend
knowledge of relational attributions in leadership literature by examin-
ing their moderating role in the relationship between servant leader-
ship and follower gratitude. Second, our research answers the call to
explore the unique contribution of gratitude in the workplace (Fehr
et al., 2016), by emphasizing the role of persistent gratitude within
the context of servant leadership. Building upon the established posi-
tive relationship between gratitude and prosocial behaviors (Ma et al.,
2017), we reveal the conditional mediating role of gratitude in the
relationship between servant leadership and employee prosocial
behaviors. Third, we test upward voice as a conditional indirect out-
come of servant leadership. Our research findings may enrich our
understanding regarding when and how servant leadership may
encourage upward voice in the workplace. The hypothesized model
is shown in Figure 1.
2 | T H E O R E T I C A L D E V E LO P M E N T A ND
HYPOTHESES
2.1 | Attributions for servant leadership
Attribution theory is composed of a set of theoretical frameworks
(Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967, 1973; Weiner, 1985) that were built on
the premise that every individual is a “naïve psychologist” who has
an innate tendency to make sense of what he or she encounters
(Heider, 1958), especially when experiencing something that is disap-
pointing or surprising (Lord & Smith, 1983; Martinko, Harvey, & Doug-
las, 2007; Wong & Weiner, 1981). In leadership research, most of the
attribution studies focus on the “disappointing” side, exploring leaders'
and employees' attributions in the context of negative events or
behaviors, such as negative performance feedback (e.g., Eberly, Holley,
Johnson, & Mitchell, 2017; Liden & Mitchell, 1985; Martinko, Moss,
Douglas, & Borkowski, 2007) and abusive supervision (Burton, Taylor,
& Barber, 2014). Positive leader behaviors may, however, also trigger
employees' attributions when employees feel that the behaviors are
surprising or counterintuitive. Servant leadership, composed of two
distinct social statuses—servant and leader—may trigger observers'
curiosity in interpreting leaders' intentions in serving the subordinates.
As Greenleaf (1970) contends at the beginning of his first essay, “the
servant leader is servant first … This person [the servant leader] is
sharply different from one who is leader first” (p. 6). Because of the
uniqueness of servant leadership, employees may ask why servant
530
FIGURE 1 Hypothesized model
leaders continually serve them and put their interests before the
leaders' own self‐interest.
To answer this question, employees may form different attribu-
tional explanations for what causes the leader to engage in servant
leadership behaviors that put them first, help them grow and succeed,
provide them with emotional healing, and empower them (Liden et al.,
2008). We contend that the attributional explanations that employees
make for servant leadership can be idiosyncratic. The clues for
explaining the special treatment they receive from the leader are
obtained from their daily interactions with the leader. However, the
classic theoretical frameworks (e.g., Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967,
1973; Weiner, 1985) mainly focus on attributions for individual behav-
iors, so they may not be sufficient to explain the interpersonal interac-
tions between leaders and followers (Eberly et al., 2011, 2017).
Specifically, previous research on attribution processes emphasizes
attributional explanations for the inquiry of “why someone has done
something” or “why I experienced something” with the “object” of
the attributions referring only to one person. Conversely, the situa-
tions that employees attempt to explain on a daily basis concern
“why something happened between my leader and me”?
Because leadership is largely a dyadic process (Graen, 1976), it fol-
lows that employees' attributions for servant leadership behaviors are
made on the basis of their one‐on‐one interactions, instead of their
observations of the leader's behaviors toward the group as a whole.
In essence, their perceptions of the relationship that they have with
the leader dictate the way in which they evaluate the behavior of the
leader. Thus, we propose that relational, rather than external or internal,
attributions determine employees' reactions to servant leadership.
2.2 | Relational attributions for servant leadership
and employee gratitude
Gratitude is evoked under the condition that another person has
intentionally given something of value (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006),
which parallels employees' perceptions of what servant leaders do
every day—giving them valuable support. However, only receiving
help from another person is not sufficient for a person to feel grateful.
Indeed, the grateful feelings may be influenced by the receiver's inter-
pretations of the favor (Watkins et al., 2006). That is to say, whether
an employee feels gratitude when working with a servant leader is
dependent on how they interpret the leader's valuable support.
SUN ET AL.
Although there may be multiple explanations for servant leaders'
behaviors, we contend that the relationship with the leader is a salient
factor in evoking employees' gratitude. In the workplace, the dyadic
relationship between a leader and a follower, which is developed and
maintained through a “give and take” process (Liden, Anand, &
Vidyarthi, 2016), may serve as the prerequisite context of gratitude.
Accumulated research has revealed that the quality of a leader–
follower relationship is determined by the social exchange process
between them (Settoon, Bennett, & Liden, 1996; Wayne & Green,
1993). When interpreting leaders' help, employees may or may not
attribute the “give” from the leader as a part of the “give and take” pro-
cess in social exchange. If they interpret leaders' help as caused by
leaders' intentions of maintaining the social exchange between them,
employees may not feel grateful, because the help may no longer be
perceived as unconditional. This suggests that employees' feelings of
gratitude are related to the extent to which they attribute the favorable
treatment from a servant leader to their relationship, which is also
referred to as a relational attribution.
Relational attributions are a group of attributional explanations
through which people locate the cause of what they have experienced
within the relationship they have with another person (Eberly et al.,
2011). However, in different contexts, how to interpret the interac-
tions with another person through their relationship is dependent on
the nature of the relationship. For example, a child will not feel grati-
tude for her mother's help of driving her to school every day if she
interprets the help as an obligation of her mother in this relationship.
In the context of leader–member relationships, when employees make
relational attributions for leaders' behaviors, the attributions also
reflect their understandings of the leader–follower relationship. Given
that a stable relationship between leader and follower is formed under
the condition that both parties have a congruent perception of what
they should “give and take” from the other party (Erdogan & Liden,
2002), employees rely on the social exchange nature of the relation-
ship to make relational attributions. Thus, when employees rely on
relational attributions to interpret leaders' favors, they may not inter-
pret the help as unconditional; instead, they may consider it as an
approach the leader uses to maintain their relationship.
An alternative perspective for a low level of gratitude in response
to help from a servant leader is based on research suggesting that an
increasing expectation of return associated with a benefit is related
to a decreasing feeling of gratitude (Watkins et al., 2006). If employees
make relational attributions for servant leadership, they may perceive
SUN ET AL.
that the leader has a strong expectation for them to return the special
consideration and support to maintain the flow of “give and take.” In
such situations, employees may feel indebtedness for leaders' help if
they do not have ability to return the benefits (Watkins et al., 2006).
Taken together, we propose that whether employees feel grateful
for the servant leader's behaviors is dependent on the extent to which
they make relational attributions for the leader's personal help and
concerns. Thus, we hypothesize that relational attributions moderate
the relationship between servant leadership and employees' feeling
of gratitude.
Hypothesis 1. Employees' relational attributions for ser-
vant leadership negatively moderate the relationship
between servant leadership and employee gratitude, such
that the relationship is more positive when relational
attributions are low than when they are high.
2.3 | Gratitude and prosocial behaviors
Consistent evidence of the positive link between gratitude and
prosocial behaviors has accumulated (see meta‐analytic review: Ma
et al., 2017). In the organizational context, when employees feel grat-
itude at the episodic level, they engage in more prosocial behaviors,
such as engaging in more OCBs on that day (Spence, Brown, Keeping,
& Lian, 2014). In the current study, we argue that persistent gratitude
may prompt OCB‐I at the individual level, and there are two theories
that can help explain this positive relationship.
First, Fredrickson's (2004) “broaden‐and‐build” theory suggests
that, as a positive emotion, gratitude can broaden employees' momen-
tary repertoire of positive feelings and engagement in extra‐role
prosocial behaviors, which assist them in building social bonds with
other people in the workplace. Their altruistic behaviors may help
them to receive positive treatment from other people and in turn feel-
ings of persistent gratitude (Algoe, 2012). The positive cycle
underlining the broaden‐and‐build process is formed through
employees' daily feelings of gratitude and OCB‐I and then becomes
a stable tendency shown as an individual characteristic.
Second, as suggested by Fehr et al. (2016), persistent gratitude
may shift the way in which employees think about their relationships
in the workplace and provoke a communal exchange norm. The com-
munal exchange norm, which is different from the exchange‐based
norm, is focused on the long‐term relationships with people who are
working in the same organization (Fehr et al., 2016). Employees with
high levels of persistent gratitude may help their coworkers based
on coworkers' needs rather than direct reciprocity. This means that
the more persistent gratitude felt by employees, the more they are
inclined to help anyone who needs assistance. Based on the commu-
nal exchange norm, grateful employees' OCB‐Is are not necessarily
targeted at the persons who helped them before, but rather to anyone
who needs help. Thus, we contend that employees who feel a higher
level of persistent gratitude engage in more OCB‐Is.
Hypothesis 2. Gratitude is positively related to OCB‐I.
Upward voice is a unique form of prosocial behavior, because it is
aimed at improving the work environment and procedures that may
531
potentially benefit many people in the workplace, rather than just
benefiting a specific target (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Upward voice
is also beneficial to leaders, because it provides them with insights
that can help them to make decisions that improve the work environ-
ment (Burris, Rockmann, & Kimmons, 2017; Dutton & Ashford, 1993).
The precondition of upward voice is that the employee is able to iden-
tify workplace issues and/or problems that need to be addressed. This
precondition is also reflected in previous research findings revealing
that dissatisfaction with work can promote upward voice behaviors
(Zhou & George, 2001). It has been shown that gratitude is positively
related to job satisfaction (Ma et al., 2017), making it possible that
people with a high level of persistent gratitude pay little attention to
the negative aspects in the workplace and as a result have few issues
to report to the leader. However, because gratitude and OCB‐I to
coworkers are most likely related positively, in the process of engaging
in prosocial behaviors toward coworkers, employees may identify
many issues or problems that coworkers face, but they may not have
experienced themselves. For example, helping a coworker who has a
schedule issue of picking up the children from school may inspire
the grateful employees to think of how to create a better schedule
for coworkers with different needs and voice their suggestions to
the leader. Through the day‐to‐day practice of helping other people
in need, they understand more thoroughly the systemic problems that
happen in the workplace and are confident that their suggestions will
promote positive changes. Also, according to the broaden‐and‐build
theory, employees who engage in more OCB‐Is build a strong social
bond with coworkers, which is also the main positive effect of grati-
tude (Algoe, 2012; Algoe, Fredrickson, & Gable, 2013). Therefore, they
feel safe in making suggestions to their leaders, because they know
they have coworkers' support. Thus, we propose that gratitude is
translated into employees' day‐to‐day OCB‐Is to coworkers, and then
the OCB‐Is prompt them to engage in upward voice to the leader.
Hypothesis 3. Gratitude is positively and indirectly
related to upward voice behaviors via OCB‐I.
2.4 | Servant leadership and upward voice
Research suggests a positive and indirect relationship between servant
leadership and upward voice via psychological safety, organizational
identification (Chughtai, 2016), and affective commitment (Lapointe
& Vandenberghe, 2018). Both of these studies indicate that servant
leadership can enhance employees' work attitudes and create a safe
atmosphere for employees to make suggestions. However, just creat-
ing a safe environment is not sufficient for promoting upward voice,
because prosocial motivation is another critical driver for making con-
structive changes in the work environment for other stakeholders
(Tangirala, Kamdar, Venkataramani, & Parke, 2013). That is to say,
when servant leadership is not translated into prosocial motivation/
behaviors, upward voice may not be prompted.
We propose that relational attributions act as the moderator of
the indirect relationship between servant leadership and upward voice
to the leader via gratitude and OCB‐I. When employees adopt rela-
tional attributions to explain servant leadership behaviors, they may
consider the special consideration and support from the leader as a
532
part of the “give and take” process in their day‐to‐day social exchange
relationship and thus feel less grateful. When gratitude is low,
employees' prosocial motivation to help other people is also low. Thus,
they may be involved in less OCB‐Is and then engage in less upward
voice. Conversely, when relational attributions are low, employees
may feel grateful for the leader's special consideration and engage in
more prosocial behaviors.
Thus, integrating the moderating effect of relational attribution on
the relationship between servant leadership and gratitude (Hypothe-
sis 1) and the indirect effect from gratitude to upward voice via
OCB‐I (Hypotheses 2 and 3), we propose a moderated mediation
model, in which relational attributions moderate the sequential indi-
rect effect from servant leadership to upward voice via gratitude and
OCB‐I. Specifically, we propose that the sequential indirect effect is
significant when relational attributions are low rather than high.
Hypothesis 4. The sequential indirect relationship
between servant leadership and upward voice behaviors
via gratitude and then OCB‐I is moderated by relational
attributions, such that the sequential indirect relationship
is more positive when relational attributions are low than
when they are high.
3 | METHOD
3.1 | Participants and procedure
Multisource data, collected in three time phases, were applied to test
the hypothesized model. All of the participants in the present study
are social workers who work for a district in Beijing, China. The pri-
mary responsibility of the social workers is to help the residents in this
district solve and cope with problems in their everyday lives. Their
work includes visiting residents in the district, identifying people in
need of help, helping the superior administrative unit to introduce
and explain new policies to residents, and assisting residents to obtain
legal documents and certifications. Because of the nature of their
work, most of the social workers spend about half of their work time
on field work in the district and another half of their time doing admin-
istration work in the office.
We invited 187 social workers from 13 communities (at different
work locations) in the district to participate in our study. This study
was also a part of the employee well‐being project of the district with
the purpose of helping the managers identify the beneficial and
threatening factors that may influence social workers' task behaviors
and psychological well‐being. All the surveys were administered via
an online survey platform. Before the data collection, participants
received a paper version introduction about the purpose and proce-
dure of the survey administration as well as a consent document that
explained that their participation is voluntary and that their responses
would be held in strict confidence.
The data collection included three phases. In the first phase, par-
ticipants completed the initial survey, which measured the demograph-
ical variables, servant leadership, and relational attributions for servant
leadership. Attributions to self and attributions to the leader were also
SUN ET AL.
measured as control variables in the first phase. In the second phase,
we applied an experience sampling method to capture two dynamic
variables, gratitude and daily OCB‐I. The daily surveys started 2 weeks
after the initial survey and continued for 2 weeks. The links for the
Time 1 daily survey and the Time 2 daily survey were sent to partici-
pants' smartphones at around 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on each work
day. Participants were asked to complete every survey within 3 hr. We
measured employees' gratitude during the morning in every Time 1
daily survey and employees' OCB‐I in every Time 2 daily survey.
One week after the last daily survey, the third phase started. We
invited the social workers' immediate leader, the leader with whom
they interact most frequently, to rate each follower's upward voice.
Among all the social workers that we invited, 137 (73%) of them
completed the initial survey, the post survey, and at least three pairs
of daily surveys during the 10 workdays, constituting the final sample
for analyses. Among the participants who completed the surveys,
74% of them are female, with the average age of 40.65 years
(SD = 7.44). On average, the social workers had been working in this
organization for 3.49 years (SD = 0.86) and working in the current
community for 3.08 years (SD = 0.95). Among all the participants,
96% of them have a bachelor or equivalent degree. During the 10 days
of daily survey administration, on average, they worked 6.32 hr
(SD = 0.95) per day. Twenty‐five leaders rated an average of 5.48
social workers (SD = 3.14, ranged from 1 to 13). The leaders were
working in the same location with the employees who were rated by
them, overseeing the employees' daily work and providing them with
feedback on a daily basis.
3.2 | Measures
Brislin's (1980) translation–back‐translation procedure was adopted in
creating the Chinese versions of the scales employed in this study. The
translation was also checked by two leaders from the upper‐level
administrative unit. They were asked to consider the appropriateness
of the language for social workers. All the items in the social worker
surveys were rated on a response scale ranging from 1 (strongly dis-
agree) to 5 (strongly agree) unless otherwise noted. In the leader sur-
vey, we adopted a 7‐point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = strongly
disagree to 7 = strongly agree) to measure leader designated questions.
3.2.1 | Servant leadership (initial survey)
Participants were asked to think of the leader with whom they
interacted most frequently and rate the leader based on their general
perception of the leader on the servant leadership scale (Liden et al.,
2015). We adopted the short version of servant leadership scale in
the current study (SL‐7), which consists of seven items (Liden et al.,
2015)—one item from each dimension of the long version 28‐item ser-
vant leadership scale (SL‐28; Liden et al., 2008). Empirical evidence
from six research samples showed that SL‐7 was parallel with SL‐28
in many aspects: SL‐7 was highly correlated with SL‐28 (the average
correlation was 0.90); the internal consistency reliabilities were high
(above 0.80 in all the samples); SL‐7 revealed comparable criterion‐
related validities with SL‐28 (on OCB‐O, OCB‐I, in‐role performance,
helping, and creativity; Liden et al., 2015). Sample items of the SL‐7
SUN ET AL. 533

scale include “My leader makes my career development a priority” and
“My leader puts my best interests ahead of his/her own” (α = 0.86).
3.2.2 | Relational attributions (initial survey)
In the present study, relational attributions are treated as one of the
key variables in hypotheses testing, whereas another two alternative
attributions—attributions to self and attributions to leader—are con-
trolled to demonstrate the unique contribution of relational attribu-
tions in this model. We adopted Burton et al.'s (2014) 10‐item scale
to measure relational attributions for servant leadership, as well as
attributions to self and attributions to leader. This scale appeared
immediately after the servant leadership scale, and the participants
were instructed to use the 10 items to explain their immediate leader's
intention of acting as reflected in the SL‐7 items that they just com-
pleted. Three items were used to measure relational attributions, and
one sample item is “the relationship I have with my supervisor is one
of the reasons he or she acts the way he or she does toward me”
(α = 0.97). In addition, four items were used to assess attribution to
self, and one sample item is “I probably provoked my supervisor to
act the way he or she does” (α = 0.71). The other three items in the
scale are intended to assess attributions to leader. One sample item
is “my supervisor chooses to act the way he or she does” (α = 0.70).
Exploratory factor analyses results show that one item in the attribu-
tions to self (“I am at fault for the way my supervisor treats me at
work.”) has bad loadings on all of these three dimensions, so we
excluded it from the hypotheses testing.
3.2.3 | Gratitude (daily T1 survey)
Following previous studies (i.e., Emmons & McCullough, 2003;
McCullough, Tsang, & Emmons, 2004), we used three adjectives to
measure social workers' gratitude on every workday in the Time 1
daily survey. The three adjectives are “grateful,” “thankful,” and
“appreciative.” The average reliability of gratitude across the 10 days
is 0.98, ranging from 0.97 to 0.99. To be noted, gratitude was not
measured as an emotion directed toward a specific person or event
but the general emotional state of that day. In the present study, we
focus on persistent gratitude, which is the tendency of people to feel
gratitude in their daily work. Given that a one‐time measurement is
possibly influenced by employees' feelings at the moment that they
complete the survey, we applied an experience sampling design,
measuring gratitude on each workday across 10 days. This design
can help us capture a general tendency of every employee's grateful
feelings in general. In the analyses, we consider only the individual dif-
ferences of gratitude by taking a multilevel SEM approach (Preacher,
Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010) to capture each participant's persistent
gratitude.
3.2.4 | OCB‐I (daily T2 survey)
OCB‐I was measured at the daily level in the Time 2 daily survey. Due
to the length restrictions for daily surveys, we adopted three items
from Williams and Anderson's (1991) scale considering the context
of the social workers' daily work. The three items include “goes out
of way to help other employees,” “take a personal interest in other
employees,” and “takes time to listen to coworkers' problems and
worries.” The range of the reliabilities in the 10 days is from 0.72 to
0.94, with an average of 0.87. In order to capture a general tendency
of employees engaging in OCB‐Is in their daily work, we measured
OCB‐I using the same experience sampling method that we employed
to measure gratitude.
3.2.5 | Upward voice (leader survey)
Following Liu, Song, Li, and Liao (2017), we used three items to measure
participants' upward voice. The items were focusing on employees' sug-
gestions, opinions, and concerns regarding ways to improve the work.
These items are the following: “this employee gave me constructive
suggestions regarding work‐related issues,” “this employee expressed
his/her opinions to me, which are different from mine,” and “this
employee pointed out problems in our work or company” (α = 0.75).
3.3 | Analytic strategies
Following Preacher et al.'s (2010) recommendations, we tested all
hypotheses simultaneously rather than in a piecemeal or causal step
approach. Due to the nested nature of the data (i.e., daily measures
nested within individuals and individuals nested within leaders), we
tested the hypothesized model in Mplus 8 (Muthén & Muthén,
1998) by calling the “three‐level random” module. For all the variables,
their variance at different levels was considered by adopting Preacher
et al.'s (2010) multilevel SEM framework to avoid the conflation of
effects at different levels. The hypothesized relationships among

TABLE 1 Percentage of the variance at the daily, between, and leader levels
% of variances at different levels
Daily Individual Leader
Construct level level level
1. Gratitude (daily T1 survey) 34% 62% 4%
2. OCB‐I (daily T2 survey) 66% 33% 1%
3. Servant leadership (initial survey) — 75% 25%
4. Relational attributions (initial survey) — 72% 28%
5. Upward voice (leader survey) — 39% 61%
6. Attributions to self (initial survey) — 67% 33%
7. Attributions to leader (initial survey) — 83% 17%

Note. Variables in italics represent control variables.

534 SUN ET AL.

variables were examined at the individual level. In Table 1, we pre-
sented the percentages of the variance at different levels for all the
variables that we measured to ensure there is sufficient variability at
the individual level.
For testing the moderation effects, we group‐mean centered the
independent variables (IV, i.e., servant leadership), the moderator
(i.e., relational attributions), and the control variables acting as moder-
ators (i.e., attributions to self and attributions to leader). We first
regressed gratitude on the IV, moderators (including moderators as
control variables), and their interaction terms. Then we tested and
plotted the simple slopes for the relationship between servant leader-
ship and gratitude when relational attributions were at +1 (SD) and −1
SD levels through Preacher, Curran, and Bauer's (2006) online tool.
To test the indirect effect, we used R package to conduct Monte
Carlo simulations with 20,000 replications (Mackinnon, Lockwood, &
Williams, 2004; Preacher & Selig, 2012). The conditional indirect
effects (servant leadership ➔ gratitude ➔ OCB‐I ➔ upward voice) were
tested when relational attributions were at the +1 SD and −1 SD levels.
The moderated mediation effects were tested by two steps. The
first step tested the sequential indirect effect from the interaction
term between servant leadership and relational attributions to grati-
tude, to OCB‐I, and then to upward voice. The second step further
tested the conditional indirect effects from the slopes for the relation-
ships between servant leadership and gratitude when relational attri-
butions were at +1 SD and −1 SD levels, to OCB‐I, and then to
upward voice. The conditional indirect effects were generated via
20,000 replications in Monte Carlo simulations (Mackinnon et al.,
2004; Preacher & Selig, 2012).
Finally, we investigated two control variables that may influence
the results of our study. The first one was trust in leader due to its sig-
nificant relationship with servant leadership found in previous studies
(see the meta‐analytic results in Chaudhry, Cao, & Vidyarthi, 2015).
Another one was the dyadic tenure with the leader because of the dyadic
nature of relational attributions and the practice in previous leadership
studies (e.g., Liden, Wayne, et al., 2014). The hypothesized relationship
did not change in terms of significant levels of the estimates when
these two control variables were added. Thus, we followed the sugges-
tions regarding the superfluous inclusion of control variables (Becker,
2005; Becker et al., 2016; Carlson & Wu, 2012) by excluding these
two control variables from our final model.
4 | RESULTS
Before testing the hypothesized model, we conducted a series of mul-
tilevel CFAs (MCFA) to examine that the scales we used in this study
represented distinct constructs. First, we tested a model in which
gratitude and OCB‐I were treated as both the within‐person and
between‐person factors, whereas other variables (i.e., servant leader-
ship, relational attributions, attributions to self, attributions to leader,

TABLE 2 Means, standard deviations, correlations, and reliabilities

Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Gratitude 3.17 0.82 (0.98)
2. OCB‐I 3.52 0.47 0.40** (0.87)
3. Servant leadership 3.74 0.51 0.09 0.20* (0.86)
4. Relational attributions 2.68 0.92 −0.11 −0.09 −0.33** (0.97)
5. Upward voice 5.57 1.02 0.13 0.18* 0.12 −0.13 (0.75)
6. Attributions to self 3.56 0.55 0.05 0.13 0.32** 0.05 0.10 (0.71)
7. Attributions to leader 3.68 0.56 −0.13 −0.06 0.48** −0.05 0.14 0.39** (0.70)

Note: N(individual) = 137. N(daily) = 1,217. The correlations indicate the relationships among the variables at the individual level. SD: standard deviation; OCB‐I:
interpersonal citizenship behavior. Numbers in the parentheses on diagonal are reliabilities. The reliability for the variables collected in the daily survey (i.e.,
gratitude and OCB‐I) indicate the average reliabilities among the 10 days. All variables measured with 5‐point scales, except for upward voice, for which we
used a 7‐point scale. Variables in italics are control variables.
*p < 0.05 (two‐tailed). **p < 0.01 (two‐tailed).

FIGURE 2 Individual level results. Unstandardized path coefficients are presented for the hypothesized model. *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01 (two‐tailed)
SUN ET AL.
and upward voice) were treated as between‐person factors. MCFA
results showed a good model fit for the model, χ2(262) = 512.37,
p < 0.001, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.03, SRMRwithin = 0.02,
and SRMRbetween = 0.09. This model also revealed better fit indices than
three alternative models: (1) a model in which all the variables measured
in the initial survey (i.e., servant leadership, relational attributions, attri-
butions to self, and attributions to leader) were loaded on one factor,
χ2(277) = 1,108.92, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.86, TLI = 0.84, RMSEA = 0.05,
SRMRwithin = 0.02, and SRMRbetween = 0.13; (2) a model specifying
the variables in daily survey (i.e., gratitude and OCB‐I) onto one factor,
χ2(269) = 2,357.71, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.65, TLI = 0.59, RMSEA = 0.08,
SRMRwithin = 0.26, and SRMRbetween = 0.12; and (3) a one‐factor model
in which all the items were loaded on the same factor,
χ2(284) = 3,635.99, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.44, TLI = 0.38, RMSEA = 0.10,
SRMRwithin = 0.26, and SRMRbetween = 0.19. These results indicate that
these variables were sufficiently independent of each other.
Means, standard deviations, correlations, and reliabilities are
shown in Table 2. Results of hypothesized relationships appear in
Figure 2. Specifically, the moderation effect of relational attributions
on the relationship between servant leadership and gratitude was sig-
nificant (β = −0.38, p < 0.05). We further explored the interaction
effect by testing and plotting the simple slopes of the relationship
between servant leadership and gratitude at 1 SD above (high) and
below (low) the mean of relational attributions. As hypothesized, the
results show that when relational attributions were low (−1 SD), the
relationship between servant leadership and gratitude was positive
and significant (slope = 0.65, p < 0.01). When relational attributions
were high (at 1 SD), the simple slope results revealed that there was
no significant relationship between servant leadership and gratitude
(slope = 0.03, p > 0.05). The relationships are also shown in Figure 3.
Hypothesis 2 stated that gratitude is positively related to OCB‐I.
As shown in Figure 2, at the individual level, the relationship between
gratitude and OCB‐I was significant (β = 0.21, p < 0.01). Thus, Hypoth-
esis 2 was supported.
Hypothesis 3 focused on the indirect effects linking gratitude and
upward voice via OCB‐I. We conducted a parametric bootstrapping
with 20,000 Monte Carlo stimulations (Preacher et al., 2010). Results
FIGURE 3 Moderating effect of relational attributions on the
relationship between servant leadership and gratitude
535
showed that the indirect effect from gratitude to upward voice via
OCB‐I was positive and the 95% confidence interval (CI) excluded
zero (indirect effect = 0.05, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.08]), lending support
to Hypothesis 3.
Hypothesis 4 integrated all of the relationships we considered
into a moderated mediation model in which relational attributions
played a moderating role in the indirect relationship sequentially from
servant leadership, to gratitude, OCB‐I, and upward voice. With
20,000 Monte Carlo stimulations of all the estimators involved in test-
ing the model, we found that the moderated mediation effect was
negative and its 95% CI excluded zero (moderated mediation
effect = −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.05, −0.002]). Testing Hypothesis 4, results
of 20,000 Monte Carlo stimulations revealed that when relational
attributions were low (−1 SD), the sequential indirect relationship from
servant leadership to gratitude, OCB‐I, and upward voice was positive
and the 95% CI did not include zero (conditional indirect effect(−1
SD) = 0.03, 95% CI = [0.004, 0.08]). When relational attributions were
high (+1 SD), the 95% CI for the conditional indirect effect included
zero (conditional indirect effect(+1 SD) = 0.00, 95% CI = [−0.02, 0.02]).
These results supported Hypothesis 4. Results of indirect and moder-
ating effects are presented in Table 3.
5 | DISCUSSION
In the present study, we investigated how relational attributions influ-
ence whether servant leadership elicits employees' feelings of grati-
tude and then promotes their prosocial behaviors. Specifically, we
tested a moderated mediation model, in which employees' relational
attributions for servant leadership act as a moderator in determining
the indirect relationship between servant leadership and employee
upward voice sequentially via gratitude and OCB‐I. With data col-
lected from two sources, by two methods, and through three time
phases, we found that when employees do not rely on relational attri-
butions to interpret the behavioral intentions of servant leaders, their
feeling of gratitude is positively related to the amount of servant lead-
ership they receive, and their feelings of gratitude promote their
upward voice via OCB‐Is. However, when employees believe that
the favorable treatment they receive from servant leader is a manifes-
tation of their relationship, their feelings of gratitude are not related to
the servant leadership that they receive. Most noteworthy, our results
reveal that when leaders engage in high levels of servant leadership,
followers making relational attributions feel less gratitude and exhibit
lower levels of OCB‐Is and upward voice than do followers who do
not make relational attributions.
5.1 | Theoretical implications
This study advances our theoretical understanding in three research
streams: servant leadership, attributions in an organizational context,
and gratitude. First, the current investigation follows suggestions by
previous researchers (Liden et al., 2008), encouraging more research
to explore the individual differences that influence the way servant
leadership is viewed by different subordinates. Although most
research findings of servant leadership focus on the positive
536
TABLE 3 Summary of the indirect, moderated mediation, and conditional indirect effects
Effect types
Indirect effects
Gratitude → OCB‐I → Upward Voice (H3)
Moderated mediation effects
Servant leadership × relational attributions→ Gratitude → OCB‐I → Upward Voice (H4)
Conditional indirect effects
Relational attributions are high (+1 SD)
Relational attributions are low (‐1 SD)
influences of servant leadership in work outcomes (Liden, Wayne,
et al., 2014; van Dierendonck, 2011), some studies have begun to look
at the individual factors that may decrease the perceived effectiveness
of servant leadership (e.g., Meuser et al., 2011; van Dierendonck,
Stam, Boersma, de Windt, & Alkema, 2014). Our study followed this
stream of studies by investigating the impact of employee attributions.
The findings of this study suggest that considering employees' individ-
ual differences in servant leadership contributes to our understanding
of the variability in effects observed at the individual level. The theo-
retical framework of servant leadership (i.e., Greenleaf, 1970) mainly
focuses on what a leader should do to become a servant leader, which
sheds light on the leader. However, the theory of servant leadership is
grounded in the premise that servant leaders consider each subordi-
nate's unique needs and help subordinates in different ways
(Greenleaf, 1970). Consistent with this theoretical premise, now that
substantial evidence has accumulated on the individual characteristics
and behaviors of servant leaders, we encourage more studies that
focus on the factors determining how employees feel and react to ser-
vant leadership. Regardless of a leader's intended behavioral approach
in leading followers, it is the followers' interpretations of the leader's
behavior that influence the followers' attitudes and behaviors (Green
& Mitchell, 1979). Introducing the salience of relational attributions
as a way to understand followers' differential reactions to servant
leaders makes a contribution to theory on servant leadership.
Second, through exploring of the role of relational attributions in
determining the level of persistent gratitude, we answered Martinko,
Harvey, and Douglas's (2007) call for more research in disentangling
the relationship between attributions and emotions. The findings of
the current investigation have shown that the theory of relational
attributions (Eberly et al., 2011) provides a unique perspective in lead-
ership studies. Given that the leader–member exchange relationship is
an effective predictor of many important employee outcomes (e.g., job
satisfaction, performance, and turnover intention) in organizational
contexts (Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer, & Ferris, 2012), we have
argued that relational attributions may be a salient type of attributions
in organizational contexts compared with other types of attributions
(e.g., internal and external attributions). Integrating leadership studies
and relational attributions may explain why employees feel and react
differently toward a certain type of leadership, especially those leader-
ship approaches that focus on considering the differences between
employees, such as servant leadership and leader–member exchange.
Last, but not least, our findings extend our understanding of grat-
itude in organizational contexts in many ways. First, we tested the
hypothesis that gratitude not only is associated with the receipt of
SUN ET AL.
Coefficient 95% Confidence Interval
0.05 [0.02, 0.08]
‐0.02 [‐0.05, ‐0.002]
0.00 [‐0.02, 0.02]
0.03 [0.004, 0.08]
“something of value” another person has intentionally given (Bartlett
& DeSteno, 2006, p. 319) but also depends on the relationship
between the benefactor and beneficiary. In leadership research, the
relationship with the leader is a salient factor in explaining many
behaviors between the two parties. Also, because the nature of the
organizational context may involve economic exchange, the gratitude
elicited in organizations may not be sufficiently explained by gratitude
theories in social psychology and the psychology of emotion. This per-
spective is also consistent with Fehr et al.'s (2016) position that we
need to explore the uniqueness of gratitude in the organizational con-
text. Another contribution of the current study to gratitude literature
is the investigation of the relationship between gratitude and upward
voice. Although psychology literature has provided ample evidence to
support the positive relationship between gratitude and prosocial
behaviors (e.g., Ma et al., 2017), the current study assessed the com-
plexity of the relationship between gratitude and upward voice,
extending our knowledge of gratitude in the organizational context.
5.2 | Practical implications
The findings of the present research suggest that managers who
wish to become a servant leader need to devote effort and time in
listening and understanding their subordinates. This suggestion is also
provided by Greenleaf (1970) in his seminal essay. As explained by
Greenleaf (1970), leaders' willingness of listening and understanding
is the important first step, because leaders may have a natural ten-
dency to speak instead of to listen. However, just listening to subordi-
nates is not enough. Leaders need to spend time to discover the
unique characteristics of the employees and focus on their special
needs. Our results suggest that employees may not have similar
feelings when working with servant leaders. So, if a leader is willing
to become a servant leader, she should understand that employees
may interpret her behaviors in different ways. Specifically, a servant
leader should always keep in mind that every employee is unique
and that leader behaviors need to be tailored to the novel qualities
of each follower.
To weaken the potential negative impact of relational attributions,
servant leaders also need to clearly communicate their expectations to
followers, convincing followers that their intention is grounded in their
genuine concern to bring out the full potential in each employee. They
may also communicate with followers about their philosophy of being
a leader, encouraging them to contribute to the team, organization,
and community by serving others as they do on a daily basis.
SUN ET AL.
5.3 | Strength, limitations, and future research
To test the hypothesized model, we utilized a study design integrating
the traditional cross‐sectional design, experience sampling method, and
multilevel analyses measuring different variables at three different time
phases. To prevent the potential for common method bias (Podsakoff,
MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), we asked leaders to report the
outcome variable, used two different methods, and collected data at dif-
ferent time points. The design of the study considered the unique char-
acteristics of each variable. For example, gratitude can be found at the
within‐person level, between‐person level, group level, and even organi-
zation level (Fehr et al., 2016), and its effects at different levels are not
the same. We measured gratitude every day across 10 workdays. This
repeated measurement helped us capture the unique variance that
resides at the individual level and best represents persistent gratitude.
A second strength of the investigation is that we investigated the
effectiveness of servant leadership within a public sector organization
from which we obtained a sample of social workers. Most organiza-
tional research studies have been conducted in for‐profit companies,
but relatively few investigations have been carried out in the public
sector. Considering the leadership phenomenon in different occupa-
tions and different types of organizations can help us understand the
generalization of the findings in our research.
Third, we controlled for attributions to self and attributions to the
leader in the relationship between servant leadership and gratitude,
showing that only relational attributions influenced whether employees
feel gratitude when working with a servant leader. The results demon-
strate the uniqueness of relational attributions in the context of leader-
ship research.
As with any study, this research has some limitations. The first
limitation is that in its infancy, relational attributions theory has not
yet been fully developed. According to the original theoretical devel-
opment by Eberly et al. (2011, 2017), we define relational attributions
as attributional explanations based on Martinko and Thomson's (1998)
integration of the classic attribution theories (e.g., Kelley, 1973; Wei-
ner, 1985). This treatment may be inconsistent with another argument
appearing in Eberly et al.'s (2011) paper, as they seem to suggest rela-
tional attributions are the third dimension of locus of causality. We
encourage researchers in future studies to clarify the definition of
relational attributions from the perspective of differentiating the
attributional dimensions and explanations.
The second limitation involves the way in which we measured
attributions. Given that the concept of relational attributions is rela-
tively new, we only found two studies (i.e., Burton et al., 2014;
Eberly et al., 2017) that had tested relational attributions empirically,
and the items used in these two studies overlapped with each other.
We adopted Burton et al.'s (2014) 10‐item scale, because it was
designed for measuring attributions for leadership in general, instead
of attributions for a specific type of event or behavior. However,
Burton et al.'s (2014) scale requires the participants to rate their
attributions for leaders' behaviors, so it potentially primes participants
to make attributions that they may not have made without
prompting. In future studies, researchers may consider refining this
measurement and clarifying the procedure for measuring attributional
explanations.
537
The third weakness concerns the relatively small sample size
(N = 137) to test the theoretical model. Because low statistical power
makes it more difficult to detect effects that are present in the popula-
tion, we cannot conclude whether the insignificant relationship in the
model (e.g., servant leadership to gratitude) was due to the low statisti-
cal power or the lack of an effect in the population. We encourage
researchers to replicate the findings in this model with a larger sample.
The fourth limitation pertains to the short‐version scales used in
the study (i.e., SL‐7, gratitude, and OCB‐I). Although we have provided
the reasons for using short scales, using short‐version scales may not
fully capture the domain of the construct being measured. Thus, we
encourage future research to use the full version of scales.
Another weakness of the study relates to collecting the data in a
public sector organization in China. The collectivistic culture and the
prosocial nature of the work may show larger effects (i.e., the relation-
ship between gratitude and OCB‐I) than in different types of work and
in Western cultures. Thus, replicating the model in different cultures
and different organizations may help us to understand the macrolevel
influence from occupations and cultures.
In future studies, researchers may consider revisiting the theoret-
ical framework of attribution theory in the organizational context.
Even though Kelley's informational cues (Kelley, 1967) and Weiner's
(1985) achievement motivation model are still dominating this area,
we observe some emerging studies that have begun to develop other
theoretical frameworks to capture individuals' attributional explana-
tions under a specific context. For example, Rodell and Lynch (2016)
developed an “intrinsic attributions versus impression management
attributions” framework in measuring employees' attributional expla-
nations of a coworker's volunteering behaviors; Liu, Liao, and Loi
(2012) proposed an “injury initiation versus performance promotion”
in capturing employees' attributions for abusive leadership. These dif-
ferent theoretical frameworks focus on the meaningful attributional
explanations that make the most sense for certain types of behaviors
or events. Even though this approach of utilizing attribution theory
may violate the parsimony principle of science, because attributional
explanations appear in countless situations, it prevents several
research artifacts introduced when priming research participants to
think of an information cue (Kelley, 1973) or attributional dimension
(Weiner, 1985), which may not be the way in which they naturally
interpret the situation. Therefore, we urge researchers to revisit the
theoretical foundation of attribution theory and explore alternative
avenues in creating a more refined approach to investigating attribu-
tional processes.
Also, instead of focusing on the effects of relational attributions,
it is also important to investigate the precursors of relational attribu-
tions. The present study shows that individuals form different
relational attributions, but we are unclear of the sources of relational
attributions. We need to understand why some employees highly
rely on relational attributions to explain leaders' behaviors, but
some do not. Specifically, we encourage future studies to explore
the factors that may trigger different attributions, such as a person's
past experiences and the culture of the organization. It is also impor-
tant to understand whether leaders' behaviors trigger the attributions
made by followers, and if so, what types of behaviors are involved in
the process. Also, given that modern organizations rely more on
538
collaboration in teams, it is intriguing to understand what role
coworkers play in forming employees' relational attributions.
6 | C O N CL U S I O N
The present study contributes to theory development by empirically
exploring the role that relational attributions play in the cognitive pro-
cesses involved in follower assessments of leader behaviors. Through
an integration of a time‐lagged design and experience sampling
method involving data collected from two different sources at three
time phases, the present study extended our knowledge of how
employees' attributional and emotional reactions to servant leadership
form and how these reactions influence their prosocial behaviors. Our
results offer preliminary evidence of the uniqueness of relational attri-
butions in affecting employees' degree of gratitude for the support of
servant leaders. We encourage future research to replicate our results
with different samples and to endeavor to further refine the theoreti-
cal frameworks for attribution theory.
ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS
We appreciate funding received from the Greenleaf Scholars Program
2017 for this study. We thank Gordon Cheung, University of
Auckland, for his valuable advice concerning moderation effects.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Jiaqing Sun is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Manage-
rial Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She received her
PhD degree in Social Psychology at Beijing Normal University. Her
research primarily focuses on leadership, emotions, and
attributions.
Robert C. Liden is Professor of Management, Coordinator of the
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management doc-
toral program, and Director of Doctoral Programs for the College
of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
He received his PhD at the University of Cincinnati. His research
focuses on interpersonal processes within the context of topics
such as leadership, groups, and career progression.
Linyi Ouyang is a doctoral student of Organizational Behavior at
the School of Business, Renmin University of China. Her research
interests include leadership and prosocial motivation.
How to cite this article: Sun J, Liden RC, Ouyang L. Are ser-
vant leaders appreciated? An investigation of how relational
attributions influence employee feelings of gratitude and
prosocial behaviors. J Organ Behav. 2019;40:528–540.
https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2354