Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-x2lbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T01:12:23.324Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cronyism and Nepotism Are Bad for Everyone: The Research Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

Jone L. Pearce
Jone L. Pearce*
Affiliation:
The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jone L. Pearce, The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92617. E-mail: jlpearce@uci.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Jones and Stout (2015) have made one claim that I would like to correct: There is substantial quantitative (and observational) research on the workplace and organizational performance effects of nepotism and cronyism. That these authors have missed this research is understandable; the research is not in traditional industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology publications (although some of it does appear in journals from the related field of organizational behavior). Nevertheless, this work is systematic and rigorous, and the work provides strong evidence to support the experience-based perceptions of practitioners that nepotism and cronyism damage employees and their supervisors and produces poorer organizational performance. I welcome the opportunity that Jones and Stout (2015) have provided to briefly introduce my colleagues in I-O psychology to this literature.

Information

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 41 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Al-Aiban, K. M., & Pearce, J. L. (1993). The influence of values on management practices. International Studies in Management and Organization, 23, 35–52.Google Scholar
Fligstein, N. (2001). The architecture of markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hellman, J., Jones, G., & Kaufmann, D. (2003). Seize the state, seize the day: State capture, corruption and influence in transition. Journal of Comparative Economics, 31, 751–773. doi:10.1016/j.jce.2003.09.006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, R. G., & Stout, T. (2015). Policing nepotism and cronyism without losing the value of social connection. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 8, 2–12.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, D., & Kraay, A. (2002). Growth without governance. (Policy Research Working Paper No. 2928). Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Pearce, J. L. (2001). Organization and management in the embrace of government. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, J. L., Branyczki, I., & Bakacsi, G. A. (1994). Person-based reward systems. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15, 261–282. doi:10.1002/job.4030150307Google Scholar
Pearce, J. L., Branyczki, I., & Bigley, G. A. (2000). Insufficient bureaucracy: Trust and commitment in particularistic organizations. Organization Science, 11, 148–162. doi:10.1287/orsc.11.2.148.12508Google Scholar
Pearce, J. L., & Huang, L. (2014). Workplace favoritism: Why it damages trust and persists. The Merage School of Business Working Paper. Irvine, CA: University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Pearce, J. L., Xin, K. M., Xu, Q. J., & Rao, A. N. (2011). Managers’ context: How government capability affects managers. British Journal of Management, 22, 500–516. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00756.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redding, S. G. (1990). The spirit of Chinese capitalism. New York, NY: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization (Henderson, A. M. & Parsons, T., Trans. & Eds.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar