HR systems, attachment styles with leaders, and the creativity-innovation nexus

The aim of this paper is to bring together literature on strategic human resource management and leadership and theorize about their cross-level interplay. Specifically, we offer propositions in relation to the interactive influence of attachment styles that followers perceive to have developed in their dyadic relationship with their leaders/supervisors and HR systems on individual innovation processes. We narrow in on three leadership attachment styles perceived by employees (secure, anxious, and avoidant) and two opposite HR systems in organizations (compliance and commitment) in order to propose that their interactions have different roles in predicting two different elements of employees' innovative work behavior: idea generation and idea implementation behaviors. Our theorizing results in a conceptual model and a matrix of 12 specific propositions about potentially promoting (complementing or positively supplementing) or inhibiting (in the case of no fit or negative supplement) multiple effects of different combinations of attachment styles and HR systems. We conclude by discussing suggestions for future research, methodological considerations, and practical implications.