Effects of Nepotism on Employees’ Productivity and Organization Performance, Saudi Arabia.
introduction
Nepotism can be defined as a scenario where a someone successfully secure recruitment favors, promotion opportunities, favorable working conditions among other favors in an organization despite their knowledge base or their skills capacity to undertake the job. The employee in this case doesn’t deserve the favors received since they fail in qualification requirement but due to their relation with the company owners (Keleş, Özkan and Bezirc ,2011).
Nepotism in organization has been seen to have more negative impacts than the positive impacts. Many people have ignored the aspect of the benefits that may accrue to businesses which practice nepotism, visualizing it as if to have only negative impacts which is not the case. Among the benefits that arise as a result of nepotism include, reduced cost of recruitment, increased employee’s loyalty, increased job morale and trust on the part of the employees (Williams and Mary 2003). The vice also has many dysfunctional consequences as a result of the favoritism involved. There exists a knowledge gap about the implications of nepotism to the firm’s success. The information available is highly subjective and based on individual perception on nepotism rather than research-based information. Nepotism as a practice is completely unavoidable when dealing with family businesses. Under this kind of business set -up the major influential positions in the business are held by family members (Olson et al., 2003). The main aim of this study however, is to try and analyze the employee’s perception on the issue of the nepotism, and how nepotism affects the operations of an organization. the organization success is based on management understanding and managing of human behavior within the organization (Mulins,2007). Nepotism has been hypothesized to be a factor affecting the human resource behavior within the organization. The study results therefore, will be used to understand the implication of nepotism to employee’s behavior. The study adopted qualitative research design to enhance the data collection and analysis. The study approach was purposively selected since, the researcher realized that it would help achieve the objectives of the study effectively. This study seeks to bridge the knowledge gap on the impacts of nepotism at the workplace to help the managers as well as the business owners to make the right decisions on matters nepotism. The study results will enable the organization managements to understand human behavior from nepotism perspective.
Literature Review.
(Ozler et al., 2007) argues that nepotism within an organization brings about isolation, the employees who are not part of the family owning or controlling the firm end up feeling isolated and not being part of the organization. Due to this the employees lack trust with the organization that has employed them, which eventually affects their performance and the overall productivity. (Araslı and Tumer, 2008) asserts that nepotism in an organization affects employees job satisfaction as a result high job loss happens among the employees who feels neglected and rejected in those firms. The study notes that these customers can spread a negative word of mouth about the organization to potential customers and also other employee which may lead to operational obstacles for the organization.
Huff and Kelley (2003) notes that the employees job satisfaction affects the organizations success, the study asserts that commitment and loyalty towards the organization by the employees is influenced by the manner in which the organization treats the employees. Nepotism in an organization therefore results to job dissatisfaction and thus affecting the employee’s loyalty towards the organization. Keleş et.al (2011) asserts that nepotism is an organization leads to discrimination of some employees within the organization while others are favorable. Due to this the working conditions of these employee is different with the discriminated employee operating under unfavorable conditions. The study notes that as a result of this the intention to quit the job on the part of the employee increases because of job dissatisfaction. Another study by Nehmeh (2009) confirms that the employee retention is influenced by the level of job satisfaction on the part of the employee, the study notes that factors such as nepotism that affect employees job satisfaction affects the retention intention of the employee. The employee who is willing to be retainment and work within an organization is one who enjoys job satisfaction.
Khatri & Tsang (2003) affirms that cronyism impacts on the performance of the employee as well as the performance of the entire organization, this is because employee treatment is based on how easy they can be controlled by the management but not on their skills. According to Kharti and Tsang 2003 asserts that some organization seeks to give authority and power to the relatives with no consideration of their qualifications for those positions. The situation leads to job stress and therefore influencing job turnover among the employees which in return has negative impacts to the organizational performance.
Sieger, Bernhard, & Frey (2011) argue that job stress caused by nepotism affects the employee mental condition as a result of this the employee level of productivity reduces. Nepotism therefore affects the overall employee productivity within the organization. The study also affirms that the intention to quit job is driven by employee’s job satisfaction, which also affects employee commitment to the organization. Djabatey (2012) notes that for an organization to succeed in its operation its recruitment practices must be successful. Under this the organization must ensure that the right people are recruited for the right job. Through nepotism however, this is not possible since the hiring is not on basis of qualification but on relation between the employee and the organization owners. This study therefore asserts that nepotism affects the employee’s productivity and the performance of the organization at large.
‘From these approaches of different scholars this study is meant to fully analyze and answer the question of the impact of nepotism in the organization performance. This study will analyze the implications of the favourism in recruitment to job performance of the employee. The study will focus on both the positive and the negative impacts of nepotism in the selected companies and eventually come up with a conclusion and a recommendation about nepotism.
Research Objectives and Questions
Objectives of the study
The study will pursue the following objectives
To evaluate the effect of kinship and friendship in Saudi companies’ performance
To find out the effect of organization culture in Saudi companies’ performance
To assess the major factors that encourage nepotism in Saudi companies
To find out measures put by Saudi companies to deal with nepotism problem.
Research questions
What is the effect of kinship and friendship in Saudi companies’ performance?
What is the effect of organization culture in Saudi companies’ performance?
What are major factors that encourage nepotism in Saudi companies?
What measures are put by Saudi companies to deal with nepotism?
Research Methodology
The research is aimed at understanding employees’ perceptions towards the practice of nepotism. The researcher adopts the constructionism philosophy to come up with meaningful conclusion about the employee’s perception. To effectively achieve the objectives of this study the research will utilize qualitative research design. Through this the student will be able to analyze and understand the employee perception on the issue of nepotism in the organizations of their own where they are working. An approach which would involve perception interpretation was adopted for this study, this is because the study will involve the student interpreting the elements of the study as given by the respondent. This approach also is the best since the study involves interpreting human behavior based on the working environment. Despite this approach being the favorable in order to achieve the study objectives, its highly subjective and this might affect the results of the study.
The researcher will use strategic approaches to enhance meet the study objectives. Structured interviews will be designed for the organization managers. The questionnaires will be developed with questions aligned with the study objectives to enable reach the study objectives. Both these approaches will be used in data collection. Under this the student will create interview guides with questions which will allow the researcher get the intended information. Three questionnaires will be developed for each company since only three employees will be the respondents in this study. A total of four questionnaires will be created for the two companies. The respondents in this case will be the employee of the selected organizations. Two junior employees will be used and a senior employee in each organization. To achieve the best non-manipulated data. The interviews will be used on the organizations management to ensure that they give their contribution to the matter. A population of 2 organizations will be used in this study, the sample will be purposively selected with one organization with the history of nepotism practices considered. Another outstanding organization will be used to help the researcher be able to achieve the research objective of comparing the performances of both the employee and the organization as a whole in these different set ups.
Deductive approach will be adopted for data analysis this is because the researcher has some basic assumption about the expected results. Due to this the research will make use of the research questions as the basis of its analysis. Reliability tests will be undertaken to validate the data being analyzed. The analyzed data will be presented using table and graphs to the intended users. Throughout the research process ethical practices will be maintained, through this the researcher will request permission from all the stakeholders before undertaking the study. The student will seek permission from the college to undertake the research. The researcher also seek permission from the organization in which the study is set to be undertaken and the entire study will be guided by the organizations policy. Most importantly the researcher will ensure that confidentiality is maintained and the respondent’s private information is to be protected. The data collected will be used precisely for academic purposes.
Time Scale.
The study process will cover a duration of three months. During this time the student will collect data, analyses the data based on the research questions and present the analyzed data to the intended users.
Resources
(Riyal)
November
December
January
Data collection
20
Data analysis
30
Reporting
50
Total
100
References
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Djabatey, E. N. (2012). Recruitment and Selection Practices of Organisations: A Case Study of HFC Bank (Gh) Ltd.
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Hatice Necla Keleş, Tuğba Kıral Özkan, and Muhammet Bezirc (2011). International Business & Economics Research Journal. 10 (9) pp 9-16
Huff, L. ve L. Kelley (2003), “Levels of Organizational Trust in Individualist Versus Collectivist Societies: A Seven Nation Study”, Organization Science, 14(1).
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Sieger, P., Bernhard, F., & Frey, U. (2011). Affective commitment and job satisfaction among non-family employees: Investigating the roles of justice perceptions and psychological ownership. Journal of Family Business Strategy, 2(2), 78-89