Securely Attached, Strongly Committed? On the Influence of Attachment Orientations on Organizational Commitment

The paper at hand is the first that explores the notion of attachment orientations, i.e. attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, influencing individual attachment towards an organization, i.e. employees’ affective, normative and continuance commitment. Findings of a questionnaire survey reveal positive correlations of attachment anxiety with affective, normative and continuance commitment. Attachment avoidance in contrast was found to contribute only to the prediction of affective commitment. Reconsidered, our results imply low affective, normative and continuance commitment for secure employees, i.e. for employees low in anxiety and low in avoidance. Implications of the findings, regarding the question of whether organizations should abstain from the employment of secure workers, are discussed.