Workplace Friendship: Challenges & Potentials

Workplace friendships are an integral yet complex aspect of professional life, blending formal organizational roles with informal social bonds. This keynote explores the dual nature of workplace friendships, highlighting their benefits and challenges. On one hand, friendships at work contribute to employee satisfaction, well-being, and productivity, fostering a sense of belonging and enhancing cooperation. On the other hand, they can also lead to role conflicts, incivility, and reduced decision-making quality when personal and professional boundaries blur.

Drawing on recent empirical studies, this talk examines how workplace friendship develops, evolves, and sometimes deteriorates, particularly in the context of career transitions such as retirement. It further addresses the mechanisms through which workplace friendships influence organizational behavior, including self-efficacy as a potential buffer against friendship-induced role conflicts and incivility. Additionally, the talk highlights how workplace friendships across age groups can act as both a bridge and a barrier, depending on individual and organizational dynamics.

By synthesizing insights from social identity theory, role theory, and self-expansion theory, this presentation offers a nuanced perspective on workplace friendships. It calls for future research to explore their dynamic processes in diverse work environments, including hybrid and remote settings, while considering the implications for organizational practices that foster a supportive and productive work culture.

Short Bio

Dr. Ulrike Fasbender is Full Professor of Business and Organizational Psychology at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart. Her research focuses on work and aging, workplace relationships and diversity management, knowledge transfer and learning, sustainable career development, and organizational behavior, technology and change. Her work has been supported by several prestigious funding bodies, among them the Volkswagen Foundation for the project “Overcoming Societal Tensions in Europe: Can Age-Diverse Friendships be the Solution?”, carried out in collaboration with the University of Trento. Her visit is funded by a Short-Term Scientific Mission Grant of the COST Action Leverage (CA22120).