Nepotism In The Workplace Pdf Download: How It Affects Employee Behaviors and Human Resources Manage

Nepotism in the workplace has many negative connotations and is an unfair practice for a business to undertake. Allowing personal relationships to influence decision-making can create severe consequences for companies.

Nepotism In The Workplace Pdf Download

Download: https://urllio.com/2vIsQZ

While the legal framework regarding nepotism in the workplace varies across countries, generally speaking, there are no specific laws against it in the private sector. However, in many countries, it is illegal to discriminate against employees (based on a range of potential factors), and it may be possible to prove discrimination in cases where nepotism occurs.

There is some grey area between nepotism and discrimination. While it is difficult to prove one crossing over into the other, organizations with nepotistic practices can leave themselves open to potential lawsuits.

In contrast to the private sector, many countries have specific nepotism laws related to government workplaces. For example, there are statutes and regulations mentioned by the Federal Civil Service prohibiting nepotism in the US. This includes:

The leading cause of nepotism in the workplace is someone high up in a business willing to use their position to benefit personal relationships over the overall business objectives. They look to help a friend or family member rather than making an unbiased decision based on factors such as:

If nepotism becomes a factor in the workplace, it shows someone in a position of power is willing to act unethically. For example, perhaps a manager is looking to provide a favor to get one in return; maybe they want to promote a close colleague or workplace ally who will side with them on decisions and help them consolidate further power within the organization.

Nepotism in the workplace often thrives within a broader toxic work culture where people put their own interests first. To keep nepotism in check and ensure decision-making is based on the proper criteria requires strong leadership overseeing the management below. Staff also need to be able to expose instances of nepotism safely (without repercussion).

Referrals from existing staff or other stakeholders can help find team members with the potential to be a great fit within a workplace. Talent acquisition in the modern world is growing more competitive, and many companies struggle to identify candidates with the right skill set for a given role. But as employees progress through their careers, they develop relationships with people who have similar skillsets and take a similar approach to work, making them ideal additions to their current workplace.

While a referral from someone within the company may offer visibility to the candidate, it only gets them through the door and does not become a decision-making factor from then on. In contrast, nepotism occurs when a personal relationship creates a biased decision-making process.

Not hiring the best person available for the job reduces the overall performance and output of the company. When employed in a position of power, overseeing other employees, the reduced performance from nepotism becomes more pronounced and creates additional problems.

Nepotism in the workplace harms employee morale, engagement, and productivity. Showing employees performance is not the deciding factor when it comes to hiring, promotions, or day-to-day practices is a sure-way fire of destroying their motivation for the job. This has many unwanted consequences, including lower quality of work being performed, a lack of creativity and innovation, and a diminished overall capacity for a company.

This is closely related to employee turnover. Nepotism in the workplace inherently means an organization is not treating employees fairly. Why would a gifted employee continue working for a business where nepotism undermines their talent?

Although nepotism is not illegal, it can lead to discrimination complaints and lawsuits. An employee who feels cheated or ignored through nepotism may also have been discriminated against and able to find grounds to sue or file a complaint.

Hiring new staff and promoting existing staff must be open and visible to all employees. Being transparent can help remove questions of nepotism by showing the thought process behind the decisions made.

The document that should guide the final determination during hiring is the job description. Having exact, accurate, and detailed job descriptions for every role in a company can help shield against nepotism perhaps more than anything else. It sets the expectations and qualifications required for a position and clearly shows when a significant discrepancy is present between the candidate and the job description.

Jones and Stout (2015) have made one claim that I would like to correct: There is substantial quantitative (and observational) research on the workplace and organizational performance effects of nepotism and cronyism. That these authors have missed this research is understandable; the research is not in traditional industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology publications (although some of it does appear in journals from the related field of organizational behavior). Nevertheless, this work is systematic and rigorous, and the work provides strong evidence to support the experience-based perceptions of practitioners that nepotism and cronyism damage employees and their supervisors and produces poorer organizational performance. I welcome the opportunity that Jones and Stout (2015) have provided to briefly introduce my colleagues in I-O psychology to this literature.

Download the electronic Complaint of Discrimination in Employment Under Federal Government Contracts form. If you have difficulty downloading the form you may need to install free software that converts PDF files to viewable documents. For your convenience, we have provided a link to software provided by Adobe Systems Incorporated.

It is the policy of The University of Texas at Austin to provide an educational and working environment for students, faculty, staff, and visitors that is free from illegal and/or inappropriate workplace conduct, including violence, harassment, sexual harassment, sex discrimination, threats, and hazing. The university encourages students, faculty, staff, and visitors and requires employees to promptly report incidents of sexual harassment, sexual assault, stalking, and dating violence to the University Title IX Coordinator. The university will respond appropriately, including taking disciplinary action when warranted, in response to misconduct by its students, faculty, staff, visitors, and contractors.

A conflict of interest exists in a situation where a member of the university community allows outside personal interests to influence their decisions at work. Outside interests could include personal financial interests, professional activities, nepotism (family members who work for the university), the offer or acceptance of gifts or benefits from third parties, and more. Those can create conflicts between the interests of the university and your private interests.

Recent work indicates that the effects of culture on favoritism may be mediated by the social structures in which individuals and organizations are embedded (Liu et al. 2015; Skilton 2008). For example, Begley et al. (2010) suggest that the prevalence of cronyism varies with the type of network competition, and with whether networks are tight or loose. Liu et al. (2015) show that the presence of strong ties may reinforce nepotism within family firms because they create a sampling bias. This renewed emphasis on social structures opens favoritism research up to a range of new, exciting questions. We see three areas as particularly important research avenues.

In contrast, if a job applicant is related but the tie is indirect, as might occur with more distant family members, we expect managers to be inclined to adopt a more balanced approach to communal norms and expectations. Although social ties with relatives are permanent, the lower attachment associated with non-immediate ties coupled with the lower threat of social norm enforcement should make managers less willing to lose sight of their own interests. In other words, we expect managers to be inclined to balance the expectations of the community with their own professional interests, and to engage in practices and behaviors that are perceived as legitimate in the workplace. Therefore, when a job applicant is related but the tie is indirect, we expect managers to pursue a compromise strategy, such that they handle the recruitment process in ways that accommodate communal norms of favoritism but only partially conform with them. Hence, we propose:

Nepotism can manifest in the practice of hiring relatives and/or friends based on personal relationships and not skillset or experience relevant to the position. Another example of nepotism in hiring can be if the business owner creates a position only so he or she can hire a family member.

The practice of promoting employees based on personal relationships and not skillset or experience relevant to the position is another example of nepotism. This is often seen in the working relationship between manager and employee. If both individuals have enough in common to form a friendship outside of work then the risk for nepotism is possible.

The practice of managers giving desirable work assignments and projects to members of their team based on personal relationships and not skillset or experience relevant to the position demonstrates nepotism.

Example: In a warehouse environment every department or phase in production requires a certain number of employees actively working in order to meet production goals. Managers assigning preferred shifts based on personal relationships becomes a problem when suddenly the night shift is understaffed. Although the manager may not know what the problem is, the problem is nepotism in the workplace.

In companies large and small, success is dependent upon employing a highly skilled and competent workforce. HR can be a critical partner in this process, working with the leaders in the company to effectively respond and prevent nepotism. The best way to respond to nepotism is to proactively work to prevent it. 2ff7e9595c