Attachment at Work as a Predictor of Employee Communication Style

December 3, 2025

Attachment at Work as a Predictor of Employee Communication Style

Lisa Diane Foster | 2024

Abstract

The current study was the first to apply the conceptual model of attachment theory to examine the relationship between adult attachment style in the workplace and employee communication style. For more than a half century, scholars have employed attachment theory as the paradigm of choice for examining attachment relationships across the lifespan and for understanding attachment as a style of relationship to others that is characterized as either secure or insecure—avoidant, ambivalent, disorganized—in nature. Adult attachment style in the workplace was classified as secure, avoidant, and ambivalent using the Adult Attachment in the Workplace (AAW) Scale; and employee communication style was categorized as six domains—expressiveness, preciseness, verbal aggressiveness, questioningness, emotionality, and impression manipulativeness—and measured using the Communication Styles Inventory (CSI). Multiple regression analyses showed that attachment at work significantly predicted some styles of communication. However, the respective R2 values suggest that practitioners should not rely on these findings for organizational decision making. Results also indicated that Cronbach’s alpha for both the AAW Scale and CSI were lower than values that have been reported in the extant literature. Cross-cultural equivalence and negative wording of Likert-response items may have contributed to this finding. Finally, the unstable factor structure of the AAW Scale as demonstrated by past research, taken together with the unfavorable internal consistency of the AAW Scale subscales found by the current study, may suggest a burgeoning paradigm shift in attachment research. To this end, it will be especially valuable for researchers to delineate in future research if attachment to work colleagues is qualitatively different than attachment to family and romantic partners.

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