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Commentaries
The focal article by Jones and Stout (2015) has revealed just how much there is for industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists to try to unpack in the implications of nepotism for organizations and employees, particularly in relation to selection and development practices. In this brief commentary, we try to make two contributions to this state of affairs. First, we discuss the importance of disentangling different types of nepotistic and social connection preference (SCP) effects in context because these differences may in turn implicate distinct processes and effects that shape employee outcomes. We do this in part by drawing on findings from some of our own data on nepotistic hiring within a Caribbean coast guard organization (Rajpaul-Baptiste & Calvard, 2012). Second, we argue that for nepotism and SCP to be considered more fully and fruitfully as topics for I-O research and practice, these topics need to be integrated and consolidated more thoroughly along with existing work on diversity management, cross-cultural psychology, organizational discourses, organizational contexts, institutional logics, and social network approaches. We believe this is likely to produce more theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical coherence across emerging I-O research in this area, without leading researchers and practitioners to reinvent the wheel or misguidedly rely on cultural stereotypes about nepotism and cronyism.
Nepotism is clearly a controversial, inconclusive, and speculative topic. It seems that organizations and societies cannot live with nepotism and yet cannot live without it. If we consider nepotism along with other types of organizational diversity, then nepotism faces the same issues, being something of a double-edged sword (e.g., Milliken & Martins, 1996). On the one hand, nepotism runs largely counter to Western principles of meritocracy, fairness, and democracy; nepotism can therefore potentially lead to disruptive jealousy, conflict, and resentment in working relationships and can discourage other talented, diverse parties from wanting to work for an organization (Ewing, 1965). On the other hand, nepotism can be perceived as good business sense by executives: providing human capital where needed, upholding a distinctly successful corporate image, signaling recognition of loyalty, engendering a heightened sense of cultural fit, and shaping a deep responsibility for a company's growth and success (Ewing, 1965). Furthermore, nepotism appears to persist around...