Bringing along the family: Nepotism in the workplace

Abstract

The current study advances an organizational justice theory to the concept of workplace nepotism. I examined if an individual's perception of nepotism can be influenced by their cultural self-construal and how the different components of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interactional and informational) provide the psychological mechanism through which they base their judgments of fairness. A 2 (organizational selection: merit, nepotism) X 2 (competence: high, low), X 2 (in-group, out-group) experimental design was be utilized to test this theory. Participants read a randomized vignette, which varied the level of the six important factors. They then completed dependent variables (fairness evaluations and organizational reactions) about each scenario. This study represents the first empirical investigation of nepotism through the lens of individual's cultural self-construal and organizational justice.