Abstract: Previous research on gratitude expressions has focused on the impact of the recipient's attitudes and behaviors on the giver, but there is a lack of academic understanding of what factors lead organizations to adopt gratitude-focused human resource management practices and how effectively such management practices are implemented. Given this, this paper focuses on the core concept of gratitude-focused human resource management practices, aiming to clearly identify the antecedents of the formation of gratitude-focused human resource management practices and to reveal the mechanisms and boundary conditions of gratitude-focused human resource management practices. To achieve the above research objectives, the theoretical model to be constructed in this study adopts an integrated multilevel research perspective, starting from three levels: organizational, departmental and individual, to construct and test the model of the driving mechanism of gratitude-focused human resource management practices, and to examine the downward influence among multiple levels, which consists of the following four research components: Study 1 focuses on the driving mechanism of gratitude-focused human resource management practices, Study 2 focuses on the impact mechanism of gratitude-focused human resource management practices at the organizational level, and Studies 3 and 4 attempt to construct a multilevel trickle-down model of gratitude-focused human resource management practices from the organizational, departmental and individual levels. There are three innovations in this paper: first, the previous “economic exchange” perspective of human resource management system emphasizes more on the employment relationship between the organization and the employees, and ignores the positive impact of high-quality interpersonal relationships in the "social exchange" of the workplace. Focusing on the human resource management practices from the perspective of organizational gratitude can help enterprises build a harmonious organization-employee relationship. Second, academic research on organizational gratitude has focused more on the mechanisms of its influence in organizations and less on the driving mechanisms of gratitude practices. This study infers that the key drivers of gratitude-focused human resource management practice are the result of a combination of executive characteristics (human capital value orientation) and situational characteristics (environment uncertainty, organizational structure). Finally, compared to fluctuating individual gratitude expression behaviors, gratitude-focused human resource management practices are relatively stable and more conducive for employees to attribute to the organization and thus build a positive relationship with the organization. In view of this, this study examines the downward influence process of organization-department-individual and proposes a theoretical model that attempts to integrate gratitude-focused human resource management practices at the organizational level, leader gratitude expressions at the departmental level, and employee perceptions and behaviors at the individual level, thus providing a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of the influence effects of gratitude-focused human resource management practices.

Key words: gratitude-focused human resource management practices, organizational resilience, corporate social responsibility, gratitude expression, helping behavior