Nepotism Reflection in Organization

Nepotism Reflection in Organizations

One important issue in social interaction in organizations is the problem of nepotism, because workers' perceptions of nepotism affect job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and the intention of workers to stay or leave the organization. Humans as social beings in organizations need the type of organization that is designed so that humans are able to do social interaction. One important problem in social interaction is the problem of ethics and morality (ethical climate) that occurs in organizations as a forum for social interaction. Ethical climate conditions can make employees still stay or leave their organizations (labor turnover), and if the desire of workers to stay in the company (intention to stay) decreases and actually leaves the organization, the company will lose potential talent and have to incur additional costs to do recruitment, training and so on. While employees who are not loyal and have the desire to leave the organization often trigger customer dissatisfaction and damage the company's performance in the long run.

 The relationship between ethical climate and intention to stay states that high labor turnover reflects the possibility of moral problems and job satisfaction in the company and therefore the enforcement of ethical climate is the main task carried by human resource managers in the form of allocation employee resources. Ethical HR management can lose its function if non-professional dimensions such as family relations (nepotism) are taken into consideration in HR decision making. Nepotism can be seen from two perspectives namely from the perspective of the form of the relationship (kinshipism, familism, clanism etc.) and from an ethical perspective. Nepotism from an ethical perspective is seen from the effect of perception caused by the practice of nepotism in people who feel the impact. The concept of nepotism from an ethical perspective separates the notions of favoritism (discrimination in favor), discrimination (discrimination against) and partiality. Nepotism in an organization is understood as an HR problem because it has an impact on the HR management functions namely recruitment, performance evaluation, compensation etc. Nepotism in organizations is related to the concept of distribution of resources such as distributive justice in payments, which in 1963 was formulated by Adams in Equity Theory which focuses on perceived fairness of outcomes. Equity Theory then developed into the concept of Organizational Justice. Referring to Equity theory, nepotism in organizations is considered an organizational problem because workers will be motivated by the desire to get fair treatment. While according to the concept of organizational justice nepotism can lead to procedures that are unfair and will cause perceptions of injustice in workers.

Some theoretical development results on models of nepotism, within the framework of the theory of equity and organizational justice find that nepotism in organizations must be measured by indicators from an ethical reflexive perspective and not only from the perspective of family relations (kinship ) only. Nepotism from an ethical perspective has three indicators namely favoritism, discrimination and partiality. Statistical tests prove that the three indicators can reflect the situation of nepotism in organizations. The significance of favoritism illustrates that the manager of an organization that give special privileges to some workers not because of objective measures will affect ethical perceptions of other workers, while the significance of discrimination shows that differences in treatment that negatively connote workers outside the family group of organization managers will influence workers' perceptions of ethical conditions in company. The significance of the last indicator of nepotism, namely Partiality, shows that workers' perceptions in assessing ethical conditions in their organizations are determined by the actions of the organization's management, whether the manager prioritizes workers who have family relations or prioritizes the interests of the organization.