Individual differences in the workplace: Exploration of attachment styles and other traits as predictors of leadership and work-related outcomes

Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) conceptualizes people’s inclination to seek closeness and captures individuals’ propensity in close relationships. Recently, work psychology recognized its value and witnessed growing interests in adopting attachment theory to interpret workplace dynamics; however, there are still limited theoretical advancements and empirical investigations that explore individual attachment differences and work-related outcomes. This thesis offers three studies to advance the understanding of this field, adopting attachment theory as a primary lens and extend on this line of theorizing to other important personality traits in relation to work outcomes.
Motivated by the importance of attachment theory for informing workplace outcomes, advancements in the literature with inconsistent findings and growing attention in this area, paper 1 proposes a theoretical framework to integrate the cognitive, emotional and behavioural application of attachment theory in the workplace. Moreover, the paper highlights attachment activation process as boundary conditions that influence this relationship.
In paper 2, using a three-wave survey among 673 employees across 66 teams in a Chinese hospital, I empirically tested the model of attachment orientations, leader-member guanxi (LMG) and follower loneliness, hypothesizing that employees higher on insecure attachment styles, that is avoidantly and anxiously attached, will suffer a greater degree of loneliness. Further, I test LMG as a mediating mechanism for this relationship.
Paper 3 extends the theorizing on attachment styles to other important personality traits by adopting polynomial regression and response surface analysis to explore the interaction effects of leader and follower trait-like dispositions (e.g., attachment styles, relational self) on workplace outcomes (job satisfaction and wellbeing).
This thesis contributes to the literature by adopting a relational perspective to explain workplace dynamics and advances our understanding of how individual differences could impact individual perceptions and behaviours of the workplace. Implications for theory and practice, as well as future research are discussed.