The Perception of Organisational Nepotism Depending on the Membership in Selected Christian Churches

Abstract

Nepotism, just like any other form of favouratism in the workplace, is a phenomenon that is basically evaluated negatively. It adversely influences social and economic development and it has not been considered in relation to the membership of a given Christian denomination. This article reviews the literature on nepotism and takes into account the religious perspective on nepotism while the research part focuses on the analysis of nepotism taking into consideration both Catholic and Protestant perspectives. Thus, the article falls within the discussion initiated by Max Weber, who found that religious membership had an influence on economic development because business leaders, capital owners, and a highly qualified workforce and well-trained enterprise employees were, by and large, Protestants. The article is aimed at analyzing the effects of nepotism and evaluating this phenomenon from the perspective of the abovementioned Christian denominations. Qualitative and quantitative methods were included in the conducted research. As far as the qualitative method is concerned, an individual in-depth interview, conducted with two Catholic and two Protestant clerics, was applied. Within the second stage, i.e., the quantitative surveys, information received in the interviews was verified and the way of understanding and accepting the phenomenon of nepotism depending on the religious membership was learnt. This research demonstrated that Protestants regard the phenomenon of nepotism as negative more frequently than Catholics and the phenomenon is more common among Catholics than Protestants.