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The Bittersweet Silver Spoon: Considering the Mixed and Contextual Effects of Nepotistic Organizational Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

Thomas Stephen Calvard  and
Cindy Rajpaul-Baptiste
Thomas Stephen Calvard*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh Business School, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Cindy Rajpaul-Baptiste
Affiliation:
School of Psychology Keynes College Canterbury, University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Thomas Stephen Calvard, University of Edinburgh Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, United KingdomEH8 9JS. E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

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.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 31 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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