Work friends forever? Understanding why former employees maintain prior workplace relationships

Why do some individuals stubbornly maintain their prior workplace relationships years after the demise of their organization while others let them go lightly? We posit that individuals’ life stage when hired into an organization influences their later tendency to maintain prior workplace relationships, because their life stage determines their openness to developing these workplace relationships. We test this general proposition with a sample of former employees of a defunct organization. The analyses provide evidence of an inverted-U- shaped relationship between age at hire and the number of prior workplace relationships an individual maintains. This relationship is moderated by individuals’: (1) organizational tenure; (2) experiences of being hired amidst organizational decline; and (3) employment in the period immediately preceding organizational demise. We also provide evidence that individuals maintain prior workplace relationships possibly because they intrinsically value them and that maintaining p...