2.3 Nepotism
According to the Oxford English dictionary, the origin of nepotism is derived from the Latin word for “nephew” or “nepot”. These words also mean the children of a person’s brother or sister, namely “nephew”, “cousin”. Nepotism means special support of relatives (especially in terms of employment) by a person of a higher position (Hornby, 1985: 566). Nepotism is characterized as support or assistance presented based on family relationship and not of legitimacy (Milgram, L., et al. 1999: 263).
Today, nepotism is used for people who abuse their position for the benefit of their family (Ford and McLaughlin, 1985: 57). The idea of nepotism, which may appear rational and characteristic, is by and large connected with a negative situation by organizations (Asunakutlu and Avcı, 2010). Favoritism is a practice providing not only employment to family members, friends and acquaintances but also many other benefits such as promotions and raises. From this point of view, the concept of nepotism is considered as a non-professional behavior (Büte, 2011b:138).
Nepotism is a more common phenomenon in the family businesses of countries where traditional ties and relations are intense, and the marketing system is underdeveloped, but it is also encountered in developed countries (Özsemerci, 2002: 13). One of the basic attributes of family organizations is ”nepotism”, signifying ”the contracting and headway of inadequate or underqualified relatives just by prudence of their relationship to a representative, official or investor” (Wong & Kleiner, 1994). In recruitment for and appointment to organizational tasks, the principle of merit is replaced by personal factors such as kinship and blood ties, rather than skills, level of education and job applicability (Büte, 2011, p. 137-138).
An examination of a connection uncovered a significant relationship between preference, worker execution and HRM resources, while nepotism has a critical relationship with representative exhibition. The results of the research disclosed an altogether negative impact of nepotism on worker execution and HRM resources (Yasmeen, Bibi & Raza, 2019:39)
Hayajenh, Maghrabi and Al-Dabbagh (1994, p.51) reported that ”nepotism practices negatively affect representatives, the board and associations. This negative effect has prompted different bothersome qualities, for example, workers’ non-attendance/turnover, board disillusionment, disappointment and stress and association in execution.”
The conflict is between the competent employees of the field and “nepotism”, which may generate dissatisfied workers who are less motivated to work (Brandts and Sola, 2006). Nepotism is a situation which creates victims and often harms organizational relations (Arasli et al., 2006: 295).Despite all these disadvantages, people continue to use kinship relationships to get their jobs done more quickly (Meriç & Erdem, 2013: 469). Nepotism is all the more noticeably the reason for strife if there should be an occurrence of enrollment or advancement of a family relative (Abdalla et al., 1998).