Attachment, Are you by my Side? Research on the Influence Mechanism of Leader Attachment on Employee’s Workplace Incivility

Leadership attachment has an important influence on employees’ cognition and behavior. However, previous scholars have drawn inconsistent research conclusions on the relationship between leadership attachment and employees’ cognition and behavior. The reason is that scholars only consider their own needs from a single employee perspective or leadership perspective, ignoring the leader-employee interaction, and explore the attachment interaction between leaders and employees from the perspective of relationship, which can more comprehensively explain the impact of leadership attachment on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, based on attachment theory, this study explores how leadership attachment affects employees’ uncivilized behaviors in the workplace, and clarifies the mediating role of leaders’ selfish behaviors and the moderating role of kinship exchange relationships. Through the empirical analysis of the matching data of 68 leaders and 278 employees in three stages and multiple sources, we found that: (1) leader attachment anxiety has a negative effect on employees’ workplace incivility, while leader attachment avoidance has a positive effect on employees’ workplace incivility; (2) perceived leader self-serving behavior plays a partial mediation between leader attachment anxiety and employee’s workplace incivility, and complete mediation between leader attachment avoidance and employee’s workplace incivility; (3) family-like exchange relationship has a moderating effect on the above paths, and moderates the mediating role of employees’ perceived leader selfish behavior in the main effect. This study enriches the research on the mechanism of leadership attachment and deepens the understanding of the boundary conditions under which leadership attachment plays a role.