STUDENT PROFILES
PHD IN MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATION
NAME: BORAM DO
Year of Expected Graduation: 2016
Hometown: Daegu, South Korea
Academic Experience:
Undergraduate Degree:
KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
B.S., Civil & Environmental Engineering, 2007
Graduate Degree(s):
Boston College, Carroll School of Management
M.S., Organizational Studies, 2013
Research Interests:
My research focuses on emotions in workplaces – what emotions are experienced in
organizations and how they contribute to or detract from accomplishing organizational goals. I am
particularly interested in exploring emotions within complex, dynamic organizational contexts
such as organizational change and development, learning, and helping.
Dissertation: “Gratitude at work: Construct development and model building”
In my dissertation I build and test theories of gratitude at work. In recent years, there has been a
burgeoning of research on altruism, helping, and prosociality in organizations. However, it
focuses mostly on the experiences of givers or benefactors, overlooking the experiences of
recipients, such as gratitude.
Based on a literature review on gratitude in multiple academic disciplines and on multiple in-depth
interviews about experiences in work contexts for which participants were grateful, I have
developed a conceptualization of gratitude at work. I show that gratitude exists in the two different
forms at work: states and attitudes. They have different but complementary roles in determining
employees’ work behaviors. I have developed a theoretical model of the impacts of these two
forms of gratitude on helping behaviors and work performance. For empirical examination, I
developed and validated a measure of “job gratitude” which refers to attitudinal gratitude
particularly toward one’s job. I am currently conducting a multi-wave survey to examine the
theoretical models of state gratitude and job gratitude.
My dissertation contributes to research on emotions, motivation, and social exchange in the field
of organizational behavior. It has practical implications as well, as it sheds light on positive
impacts of giving and helping as well as receiving and being thankful at work.
Committee members: Professor Jean Bartunek (co-chair, Boston College), Professor Myeong-gu
Seo (co-chair, University of Maryland), Professor Michael Pratt (Boston College), and Professor
Michael Cole (Texas Christian University)
Publications, Awards, Teaching:
See Curriculum Vitae
Links:
Email: boram.do@bc.edu
Webpage: http://www.boramdo.com