Nepotism

Nepotism

Introduction

Understanding through its literal meaning, nepotism means favoritism or preferential treatment. According to Spranger et.al, (2012) nepotism is the preferential treatment of the kin or a family, especially in the context of family-owned businesses. In this context, nepotism is defined as the succession of the relatives on the virtue of their family's influence rather than on their own merit. Nepotism is commonly found occurring in business organizations through preferential hiring and open bias regarding pay decisions, assumed authorities and when making business decisions. This causes element grievance amongst other employees who are sidelined by their superiors through hiring of family members into the organization without them having any suitable merit or experience.

This paper discusses about one such case of nepotism related to Mary Smith and discusses different effects of how preferential hiring has an impact on the workforce amongst others. These are discussed in the following section.

Discussion

Problems caused by Mary Smith

Mary Smith is a new administrative assistant at a company where her father is one of the co-founders. Upon joining this position, she not only lacked the necessary skills and experience demanded by the job. But her overall attitude towards her work infuriated other employees who worked hard at their job. Within the first three weeks of her joining the company, Mary missed important deadlines of work assignments, misfiled documents and intimately socialized with specific employees during work hours. This behavior had caused more problems but because her being the daughter of the company's founder, nobody approached her to evaluate her actions for improvement.

Job Description

From the perspective of being Ms. Smith's direct supervisor, a brief job description entailing the vital job responsibilities that she needs to perform in her capacity as an administrative assistant, is listed below (Ncvo-vol.org.uk, 2010).

Job Title: Administrative Assistant

Reports to: Administrative Officer

Job Responsibilities:

Answering Phone and responding to queries

Filing data physically as well as on the computer

Sorting posts and delivered packages

Photocopying documents

Supporting other team members

Typing correspondence, reports and other documents

Noting minutes of the meetings

Submitting and distributing the minutes of the meetings

Coordinating with maintenance staff

Filing for stationary inventory

Reviewing and editing reports for the board

Schedule and notify concerned individuals about board meetings

Attending board meetings

Greeting and assisting any visitors of the supervisor

Performing other duties or tasks as required

Resolving situation of Ms. Smith

As evident from the case highlighted of Mary, as her supervisor the key steps involved in resolving her situation and directing her focus towards performing her job tasks competently. The first ...