How does secure attachment affect job performance and job promotion? The role of social-rank behaviors

- Secure attachment predicts future job performance and job promotion.
- Secure attachment predicts dominant-leadership and coalition-building behaviors.
- Women engineers exhibit less dominant-leadership and less coalition-building.
- Organizations can train employees to adopt more positive social rank behaviors.

We propose and test a model in which two social rank behaviors: Dominant-leadership and coalition-building, mediate the relations between secure attachment, job performance, and job promotion. The results of survey data collected from 131 engineers at three time points spanning on twenty nine months indicate that higher secure attachment predicts more dominant-leadership and more coalition-building behaviors which in turn lead to higher job performance and job promotion. These findings contribute to understanding one important way in which secure attachment promotes job performance and job success. Our findings further indicate gender differences in dominant-leadership and coalition building behaviors. We discuss these findings as well as their practical implications and future research directions.