In the name of avoiding nepotism, the act of appointing family members to job positions out of favoritism, some people might even avoid making decisions for jobs or contests that might superficially appear to favor someone in their family. Contrarily, a rational person does not make decisions based on concern for the uncontrollable emotions or perceptions of others except with the goal of manipulating them. A fear of public perception is ironically one of the most asinine reasons to treat something as immoral. Reluctance to hire family over non-family members even when there is no favoritism due to the perceptions of others is just a symptom of irrational priorities.
If by nepotism one means hiring family members over strangers for important positions within a company without simply hiring them by default because they are family, then of course nepotism is not some disastrous, discriminatory practice. The perceptions of other people have no role to play in making something morally acceptable or not, so objecting on the grounds that some might subjectively feel excluded or overlooked when this was not the case amounts to a mere emotionalistic objection. Personal preferences do not shape or reveal reality.
Now, if by nepotism one means hiring someone just because they are family, then of course this concept is one of discrimination on an irrelevant basis, just like choosing people for a job because they are men, women, white, black, and so on discriminates against others on some irrelevant basis. The issue is not that other people might misperceive hiring family members over strangers as favoritism, but that there is an actual bias in favor of family despite whatever ineptitudes or insincerity they might bring. Nepotism cannot be committed without a scenario where someone is selected for a job regardless of qualifications because their employer or hiring manager intended to side with family by default.
This means that some situations that certain observers might assume involve nepotism could have nothing to do with it after all. What if multiple equally qualified candidates apply for a job someone oversees and one of the candidates is their child, sibling, or parent? Would it be discriminatory to simply pick the family member because they are familiar, not because of favoritism in spite of other applicants having greater skills or a more compatible personality? In this scenario, there is no reason to choose one over the other as far as skills and intellect go, making a personal preference of hiring the family member a non-discriminatory factor.
Discriminating against non-family members in the workplace is one of many irrational ways to prioritize an irrelevant characteristic of a person over genuine talent and suitability. Not everything that seems biased or unjust truly is, however. As with other controversial job-related behaviors like workplace dating [1] or bribery [2] (bribery that is not aimed at an immoral goal, that is), appointing family members to important or prestigious work positions is not automatically a sign of discrimination even when other candidates are available. Whether the word nepotism refers to something discriminatory hinges entirely on the precise details of what a person means by the word.
No comments:
Post a Comment