Nepotism and Favouritism in Polish and Lithuanian Organizations: The Context of Organisational Microclimate

Abstract

The phenomena of ‘nepotism’ and ‘favouritism’ are frequently observed in contemporary business, being usually associated with corruption in the public sector and the abuse of public resources. The phenomena, however, have an international scale and no country and sector of the economy are free of them. Given these facts, our paper identifies the attitude of Lithuanian and Polish employees to it in the context of revealing the organizational microclimate. Our analysis is done in relation to three basic aspects: a) Sector (public vs. private), b) gender (male vs. female) and c) five different age groups. Our research sample involved 337 respondents (Poland-PL, N = 164 and Lithuania-LT, N = 173) representing public (PL and LT, N = 119) and private (PL and LT, N = 218) sector organizations. A closed-type questionnaire was used in the survey. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were confirmed by its high psychometric characteristics. Several research methods, including factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha, Spearman–Brown, factor loading and total item correlation were used in our study. The results show that there are both similarities as well as differences between the organizations analysed. As far as the private vs. public sector is concerned, in Poland, manifestation of nepotism in principal does not differ in private and public organizations, unlike in Lithuanian organizations, where a worse situation is recorded in public sector organizations. In turn, comparing employees’ attitudes by their gender, it was identified that there were more similarities than differences between Poland and Lithuania in four subcategories. Finally, comparing employees’ attitudes by their age, it was identified that the least number of statistically significant differences was identified in two age groups: 18–24 years old and over 51.