Research

Yang, S., Cho, Y., & Do, B. (under review). The effects of gratitude expression on witnesses: Moderating role of expresser regulatory focus. Current Psychology. 

• Presented at the Korean Academy of Management Conference, Jeonju, Korea.

Despite the rising scholarly interest in gratitude expression, much less is known about how expressing gratitude can influence third-party witnesses beyond the expresser – benefactor dyad. Drawing from the emotions as social information theory and emerging research on the group-level implications of gratitude, we propose that expressing gratitude will lead witnesses to view expressers in a more positive light, with the expressers’ regulatory foci acting as moderators due to their influence on eliciting witnesses’ different inferential processes upon observing gratitude expressions. We conduct a two-wave survey on 128 part-time MBA students and their coworkers to examine this relationship. Results indicate that expressing gratitude is linked to an increase in perceived pro-relationship behavior, and that expresser promotion focus positively moderates this relationship. However, we find that the relationship between gratitude expression and perceptions of in-role behavior is negatively moderated by expresser prevention focus. Our research extends theory and research on gratitude, the social function of emotions, and impression management. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Do, B., Yang, S., & Kim, Y. (under review). Enforcing morality through organizational change: From self-ownership threats to identity formation. Human Relations.

• Presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Copenhagen, Denmark

How would change recipients respond to change initiatives that enforce moral behaviors? To answer this question, we conduct an inductive study of a Korean company whose employees experienced change initiatives to foster moral behaviors in a paternalistic, enforced manner. Our analysis revealed that in the short term, change recipients show resistant compliance with the enforced behaviors due to anger resulting from threatened self-ownership. As enforcement is gradually lifted, however, recipients make contrasts to the forceful past and experience authenticity in carrying out moral deeds. Combined with the habituation of moral behaviors owing to the prolonged implementation, this leads to the cultivation of moral identities in the long term. Our model reveals that enforcement may be an important first step for employees to habituate moral behaviors and cultivate moral identities, despite the initial resistance arising from threatened self-ownership. We extend research at the intersection of resistance to change, moral identity, and identity regulation by addressing the previously overlooked relationship between moral change and resistance, and how moral identities can be fostered in spite of initial resistance.

Yang, S., Kwon., M., & Do, B. (in preparation, master’s thesis). Tall poppy syndrome: Subordinate intrinsic motivation increases low-status supervisor’s status threat and knowledge hiding. 

Works on the social dynamics of intrinsic motivation mostly paint a positive picture of intrinsic motivation’s interpersonal effects. We aim to offer a nuanced view by highlighting that intrinsically motivated subordinates (i.e., tall poppies) may at times become the target of dysfunctional behaviors by their supervisors. Drawing from temporal social comparison theory and the literature on status, we propose that supervisors will make positive simulations about the expected status of intrinsically motivated subordinates due to intrinsic motivation’s positive social evaluations. Furthermore, we hypothesize that low-status supervisors will perceive these subordinates as a threat due to psychological insecurities associated with low status. In turn, the sense of status threat will prompt supervisors to engage in greater knowledge hiding, as a discrete yet effective way to prevent intrinsically motivated subordinates from accumulating greater status. A two-wave field survey on 221 supervisor-subordinate dyads provided initial support for our hypotheses, and we are developing a pre-registered experiment to test the mediating effect of supervisor status threat. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on the social dynamics of intrinsic motivation and status.

* Yang, S., * Kwon., M., & Do, B. (in preparation). Justifying anger with motivation: The moderating effect of supervisor intrinsic motivation on anger expression and subordinate perceived abusive supervision. 

• Presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Copenhagen, Denmark

When are angry supervisors perceived as abusive? Despite expressed anger being prevalent in the workplace, there is a dearth of research linking anger displays to perceptions of abusive supervision. Grounding our arguments on the theory of intrinsic motivation moralization, we hypothesize that anger expressed by intrinsically motivated supervisors is less likely to be perceived as abusive, as subordinates will be more likely to view such supervisors as moral. Consequently, we theorize that perceptions of abusive supervision will be positively related to subordinate interaction avoidance. We find initial evidence for our theoretical model in an experiment of 613 participants utilizing audio-based vignettes, and we are developing a survey (Study 2) to ensure robustness by replicating the results in the field. Our theory and findings demonstrate that intrinsic motivation may be weaponized by supervisors to justify their anger, clouding subordinate judgements of abusive supervision perceptions.