Nepotism in Organizations

Preface

Nepotism is a pervasive phenomenon in human organizations (Bellow, 2003). The Family Firm Institute (FFI, 2009), a group of practitioners and academics with about 1,500 members, is designed to provide “education and networking services” to consultants of family firms. The Web page for FFI (www.ffi.org) states that family firms are “the dominant form of business organization worldwide.” Although this statement appears to be unsubstantiated by research evidence, it would be easy to argue that family connections are a major determinant of behavior in organizations. For example, major stockholders of one of the most successful business enterprises in the last century, Walmart, are relatives of its founder. It is not hard to find other examples ...