The impact of benevolent human resource management attributions on employees’ general work stress, with the mediating influence of gratitude

Workplace stress can cause serious physical and mental illness and result in billions of dollars in lost productivity every year. Researchers have called for the development of frameworks through which Human Resource Management (HRM) practices can reduce employee stress. Building on HRM attribution theory, this study builds a framework based on benevolent HRM attributions. Benevolent HRM attributions are employee beliefs that their management has enacted HRM practices to support their performance (performance HRM attributions) and improve their well-being (well-being HRM attributions). This study examined if both benevolent HRM attributions engender employee gratitude, which in turn may reduce their general job stress levels. Respondents of the study were chosen from the telecom sector of Pakistan as they operate in a high stress inducing environment. The theoretically based causal associations were examined by employing the structural equation modeling (SEM) method. The results confirmed the hypotheses and also showed that both benevolent HRM attributions reduce employees’ job stress with the mediating influence of gratitude. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed as well.