Abstract

Individuals have the tendency to neglect older connections once they get elevated in either in social, professional, business and love relationships by increasingly privileging recent higher ties, while leaving their foundational ties dormant. Recent higher-connection theory explains this recurring sociological and managerial pattern. Drawing on theories of social mobility, class consciousness, and network realignment, this paper develops the assumptions, applications and implications of the theory. The application of the theory spans politics, love relationships, business relationships, organizational management and personal advancement. The theory offers a framework for understanding how individual status elevations act to influence loyalty, identity, and relational ethics, with implications for leadership, organizational behaviour, and management scholarship. This paper argues that relational realignment is less a matter of betrayal or conscious neglect than an unconscious adaptation to new structural demands of power, identity, and resource access from the new ties. By analyzing RHCT through empirical insights from political space, sociology, and management research, this theory contributes to a deeper understanding of how status shifts reshape relational commitments and the ethical challenges this creates for leaders and individuals alike.