Hybrid work has altered where organizational members perform their jobs without eliminating the importance of who is seen, who gains access to influential actors, and who receives consequential career opportunities. Existing research provides substantial evidence on virtual work, flexible-work stigma, behavioral visibility, manager relationships, and career outcomes, yet these literatures do not establish a universal career penalty for remote work or a general causal advantage of office presence. This Original Conceptual Theory Article develops a proposed Theory of Proximity Advantage to explain when relative co-presence may become consequential for career opportunity in hybrid organizations. The theory distinguishes physical proximity from visibility, visibility from verified performance, informal access from leader–member exchange, and relational access from sponsorship and realized advancement. It proposes that hybrid-work configurations may create unequal observability and interaction opportunities; these differences may shape managerial inferences and relational access and, under discretionary allocation systems, influence developmental assignments, sponsorship, exposure, and advancement consideration. The theory is explicitly conditional. Proximity advantage should weaken where contribution is reliably observable, hybrid work is normalized, access to managers is structured, and opportunity criteria are transparent. It may also coexist with digital visibility costs and legitimate performance-based differentiation. The contribution is therefore not a claim that proximity invariably improves careers, but a testable explanation of when proximity can acquire career value. Empirical validation requires longitudinal, multilevel, experimental, and opportunity-event designs capable of separating observability, inference, access, performance, and allocation.
