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First published online October 29, 2009

Bringing avoidance and anxiety to the job: Attachment style and instrumental helping behavior among co-workers

Dvora Geller and Peter BambergerView all authors and affiliations
Volume 62, Issue 12
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726709337524

Abstract

While social psychologists have widely explored the link between adult attachment styles and interpersonal relating behaviors such as caregiving in intimate relationships, organizational researchers have yet to examine the generalizability of such findings to employee interrelating behaviors at work. Addressing this gap in the research, we extend attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) to the work context in order to generate and test hypotheses regarding the way in which helping behavior may be explained on the basis of the help provider’s level of attachment anxiety and avoidance. Data collected from 320 call center employees of a large Israeli telecommunications company suggest that while attachment anxiety is inversely associated with instrumental helping, it also attenuates the inverse effects of attachment avoidance on such helping. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Published In

Volume 62, Issue 12
Pages: 1803 - 1827
Article first published online: October 29, 2009
Issue published: December 2009

Keywords

  1. attachment anxiety
  2. attachment avoidance
  3. helping
  4. individual differences and group behavior
  5. interpersonal organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
  6. sociometry

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© The Author(s), 2009.

Authors

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Dvora Geller
School of Business Administration of Israel's College of Management, [email protected]
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Peter Bamberger
Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and Senior Research Scholar at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, [email protected]
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