Work Place Nepotism and Stress, Essay Example

Nepotism, the effects it has on a leader relationship verse Corporate when it comes to disciplining the subordinates

Qualitative Statement

Nepotism is a serious problem affecting many high profile organizations. Many crucial organizational decisions are affected by certain levels of unfairness or biasedness based on friendship or familiarities between the managerial employees and their subordinates. Despite the several rules restraining managers from practicing nepotism in their workplaces, the effort does not promise anything positive in future considering the reasons why people practice nepotism as well as the facts or nature about nepotism. Among the departments where the practice is rampant are human resource department dealing with promotions, performance appraisals and recruitment of workers. Disciplining workers for their faults is one of the roles also carried out by the managerial departments. In most societies today, people tend to associate themselves with particular group of individuals whom they usually term as friends. This is a common practice, especially in countries like the United States, Canada, UK, and in some developing nations. Basu (2009) states that nepotism has been the effect of dissatisfaction in companies drop of commitment among employees. Nepotism is caused by cultural-construal. Different organizations have come up with means with which they ensure fairness is practiced to all employees. This is an implication on the existence of nepotism in workplace. Besides, Sahara (2011) affirms that the vice is common especially in disciplining of junior employees by the managers. He presents a case in one of the US based companies in which employees were interviewed based on the kind of the punishment they got compared to one of their colleagues whom they considered was always favored by the managers. In addition, a research carried out in three companies in Boston, via interview, revealed that nepotism is rampant especially in the disciplinary practices of the junior employees. Its effect has been mass transfer request of employees as well as unplanned or early resignations. The research involved random collection and ANOVA analysis of the data representing individuals dissatisfied by the nepotistic behaviors in five Boston based companies. The analysis was meant to identify the relationship between worker dissatisfaction and nepotism in disciplinary practices of the junior employees.

Quantitative Statement

Nepotism affects many companies silently considering that it is always hard to understand the reasons behind certain decisions. In other words, it is not always easy to discern a nepotistic from a non-nepotistic individual in an organization on a legal basis. Nepotism is caused by preference to certain persons in organizations when it comes to certain decisions such as promotions, hiring, disciplining and other human resource department roles. A study carried in Houston Texas revealed that most employees get discouraged when colleagues are treated in a more special manner compared to them. From the questionnaires distributed, it was evidenced that most workers are not happy due to the level of unfairness with which they are treated. 78% of the 500 questionnaires was enough to show that many employees feel frustrated and unappreciated when their some of their colleagues are favored in certain aspects. A chi-square test on the randomly collected data of number of individuals, who believe that their bosses are unfair and nepotistic,from Houston based companies was conducted. The questionnaires mainly included the questions enquiring about the workers attitude towards their colleagues whom they believed were never treated equally when it came to punishment. In fact, some of the workers stated examples of incidences of unfair disciplinary treatment based on nepotism. Most employees related nepotistic practices from family and societal upbringings whereby most people tend to believe that their relatives come first in everything they participate in or manage. In addition, the lack of professionalism among senior employers especially when handling relative employees is a major causative agents of nepotism in disciplinary processes (Huseyin& Mustafa, 2008). Besides, the family bonding, gentleness and other factors contribute greatly to the issue of nepotism in disciplinary actions against younger employees (Vinton, 2004).

References

Basu, S. (2009). Work Place Nepotism and Stress. Bengal: Bengal Institute of Business Studies.

Huseyin, A. & Mustafa, T. (2008). Nepotism, Favoritism and Cronyism. A study of their effects

on job stress and job satisfaction in the banking industry of North Cyprus. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, Volume 36, Number 9, 2008, pp. 1237-1250(14).

Sahara, M. (2011). Bringing along the family: Nepotism in the workplace. Maryland: University of Maryland Press.

Vinton, K. (2004). Nepotism: An Interdisciplinary Model. Family Business Review. New York: SAGE Publishers.