When a supervisor expresses gratitude for employees in a way that the employee prefers, that employee will participate more at work. This is according to a recent study from CU Boulder Professor of Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics (OLIA), Dejun “Tony” Kong. Kong will discuss his new research at our upcoming IBS Speaker Series on March 3.
Who: Dejun “Tony” Kong, Associate Professor at Leeds School of Business, Director of OLIA PhD Program, and Faculty Director of the Leadership Certificate Program
When: Monday, March 3 from 12 – 1 p.m. MT
Where: Richard Jessor Building, Room 155 or via Zoom (email ibs-contact@colorado.edu for passcode)
Field: Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics (OLIA), Business Administration
“Feeling appreciated is integral to developing and sustaining high-quality relationships, but many employees do not feel appreciated at work,” – Tony Kong
For his talk, Kong will share his risk regulation model (RRM) showing the relationships among supervisor gratitude expression, employee felt appreciation, and employee voice at work. Kong and his team performed a systemic analysis using an inductive multi-step process with pilot studies. They then tested their model with 124 supervisor-employee dyads. Kong will discuss the theoretical and practical applications of his findings.
The IBS Speaker Series is open to all CU Boulder faculty, staff, and students as well as the public. This talk is hosted by the Health and Society Program at the Institute of Behavioral Science.
This talk is specifically of interest for people who:
- Want to understand how to better connect with teammates or collaborators
- Want to better connect with employees and boost team moral
- Are interested in organizational leadership, team dynamics, information analytics, or relationships
Kong is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a top 2 percentile scientist (based on single years) in the world (ranked by Elsevier BV and Stanford University). He is also a Poets & Quants 40-under-40 Best Business Professor (2019). He has published nearly 70 journal articles, many of which appear in top journals in Management and Psychology, and 1 co-edited book. His research addresses the following overarching question: How can we enable people to be more prosocial (to promote others or collective interests)? To address this question, he focuses on three streams of research: (1) fostering individuals’ positive experiences, (2) fostering excellent organizational systems, and (3) fostering a high-trust society. He has received many awards for his research, teaching, and service. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Management and the Journal of Organizational Behavior. In 2024, he was elected to be Program Chair-Elect (a five-year leadership track) of the Academy of Management’s Conflict Management Division.
Learn more about Kong’s research:
