One’s own merits do not always guarantee access to a job, and on too many occasions The really determining factor is whether or not you know someone related to the organization or project in question When jobs are scarce and unemployment soars, as has happened in many countries during the last global financial crisis, there is even more reason to consider the repercussions that the practice of nepotism may have in the workplace.
Because what is clear is that someone who enters a job by knowing someone is obtaining benefits: they go from not having a job for which they are perhaps not qualified to having one without going through too many personnel selection filters. But it is possible that the practice of “plugging” also has a negative effect on the beneficiary. A type of compensation that is more difficult to detect than the positive of earning a position with little effort.
A group of psychologists from Butler University have published an article in the Journal of Business and Psychology in which evidence is presented about the strong social stigma carried by people who have been selected for a position due to nepotism. Specifically, people who get a job because they are someone’s relatives are not only judged negatively for having taken advantage of their special contacts, but are perceived as less capable of doing their job
Investigation
The researchers focused on analyzing the answers given by 191 business administration students. The members of this group of volunteers had to imagine being workers in a bank where their boss had not yet been selected and then read information about three candidates for that job position. Two of these candidates were always the same: a well-qualified profile that met the requirements for the vacancy and another clearly underqualified. The third candidacy, which corresponded to the person who was finally hired, varied between three levels of qualification.
In some cases, this candidate had better qualifications than the other two candidates, but in others it was of the same level as the “strong” candidate of the previous two or was slightly below. In any of these three possibilities, the third candidate met the minimum requirements to access the position. However, half of the volunteers were informed that this candidacy, the one chosen, was that of a close relative of the vice president
Having gone through this phase, the volunteers had to fill out questionnaires in which they evaluated the person chosen to be their superior on factors such as their level of competence, luck, ability and political ability.
Karma things
The results show how elected people are significantly less valued when there are signs of nepotism In fact, in the three levels of qualification that the third candidate could present, it was always rated worse than the candidate that had been chosen on merit. The students assumed that this person had been chosen primarily because of her family ties, regardless of his level of ability reflected in her resume. In this way, the selected people were evaluated as if they lacked all the Typical characteristics that are usually associated with good managers regardless of whether the person chosen based on “plug” was a man or a woman.
In this way, even people who, based on the professional and academic information that was available, seemed well prepared for the position were perceived as not very capable. Paradoxically, the type of stigmatization seen in the study could make people chosen for their connections have more difficulties in developing their work due to the type of work environment they instill in the organization. It could also be difficult for them to rise beyond the influences of whoever selected them.
