The current study applied an attachment perspective to elucidate how individuals appraise stressors at work. Attachment theory proposes that individuals’ interactions with a caregiver shape their expectations and beliefs about the world, themselves, and others and predict how individuals behave. Attachment at work is a budding research topic because it informs the social aspect of work relationships, such as the leader-subordinate dyad. However, few studies have explored the potential of attachment security as a job resource. Our findings demonstrated strong support for our predictions about the relationship between transformational leadership, employee perceptions of demands and resources, and the potential explanatory role of attachment security. Moreover, findings were consistent with theoretical foundations in attachment research that identify leaders as attachment figures but also flesh out the relationship between transformational leadership and job characteristics by providing attachment security as an explanatory mechanism utilized by transformational leaders. This study contributes to the recently budding area of attachment research in the organizational literature and offers managers an attachment framework to provide resources for employees to mitigate work stress
