Understanding when employees move toward opportunities, away from threats, or pause to balance competing concerns is central for predicting workplace behavior. Organizational scholars routinely apply approach–avoidance logic to explain psychological constructs (e.g., motivation, goals, emotions), behaviors, and performance outcomes. Systematically reviewing 268 papers that apply such logic, we document three usages, from classifying single constructs to organizing entire domains. Across these usages, scholars draw primarily on two foundational approach–avoidance models with distinct foci, often treating them interchangeably. Integrating the two foundational models, we clarify the distinct affective, cognitive, and behavioral constructs related to the approach and avoidance systems as well as a distinct, often-overlooked inhibition system. We identify three meta-concerns where the field’s application is misaligned with what the integration of the foundational models specifies: (1) key constructs are confounded, (2) inhibition responses to goal conflict are omitted or misclassified as avoidance, and (3) approach responses are implicitly treated as functional whereas avoidance and inhibition responses are treated as dysfunctional. Applying the shared vocabulary and resulting integrative model to three exemplar research streams (power, voice and silence, and proactivity), we discuss alternative explanations for empirical inconsistencies and offer diagnostic tools for more precise organizational theorizing.
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Sherf et al. (2026) studied this question.