Watch My Back, I Will Flourish: Secure-Base and Promotion-Tasks

We report five studies that examine a nurturing relationship with the supervisor as an antecedent of promotion focus, a motivation reflecting exploration, creativity, and attention to gains versus non-gains. We hypothesize that supervisors who provide a secure base for their employees will increase the employees’ state-promotion focus and create a preference for engaging in promotion tasks over prevention tasks. We tested our hypotheses across five studies (N = 822): a correlational-field study, and four vignette experiments, and performed a mini-meta analysis of all studies that showed support for our hypothesis. Overall, our work suggests a theoretical link and an empirical test of two seminal theories, and sheds light on practical ways to affect employee-task preference at work through fulfilling relationships.