Summary The influence of attachment theory on organizational scholarship is growing, with more articles published on the subject in the past 5 years than the preceding 25 years combined. Prior research and reviews have primarily focused on attachment styles and their relationship with organizational outcomes. However, in the past 5 years, organizational scholars have begun exploring new directions in attachment research such as situational influences on attachment states, attachment as a moderating variable, and attachment as a dynamic process in various forms of work relationships. These advances offer new directions for organizational behavior research, notably through the lens of the attachment behavioral system—an innate psychological system that accounts for why and how people seek support from others. In this paper, we provide an overarching framework for understanding attachment dynamics in organizations and review key findings from attachment theory research on dyadic relationships, group dynamics, and the employee–organization relationship. We further discuss promising areas for future organizational research on attachment, as well as methodological developments in the priming of attachment states.

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Applying a unifying theoretical framework of high-quality work relationships, we conducted a set of 3 complementary studies that examined whether high-quality mentoring relationships can buffer employees from the negative effects of ambient discrimination at work. Integrating relational mentoring with relational systems theory, we first examined whether the presence of a high-quality mentoring relationship buffers employees in a sample of 3,813 workers. In support of the "mentors-asbuffers" hypothesis, we found that employees who witnessed or were aware of racial discrimination at work had lower organizational commitment than those not exposed, but employees with high-quality mentoring relationships experienced less loss of commitment than those lacking mentors. We then examined the specific buffering behaviors used by mentors in high-quality relationships and whether these behaviors were effective for other work relationships and outcomes. Applying Kahn's typology, we developed and validated a measure of high-quality relational holding behaviors in a sample of 262 workers. Using this measure in a third sample of 557 workers, we found that mentors buffer by

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