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Revising Antinepotism Policies: Should the Private Sector Be More Like the Federal Government?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

Jeffrey M. Cucina  and
Lisa Votraw
Jeffrey M. Cucina*
Affiliation:
Office of Human Resources, Personnel Research and Assessment Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Washington, DC
Lisa Votraw*
Affiliation:
Office of Human Resources, Personnel Research and Assessment Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Washington, DC
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeffrey M. Cucina, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 7th Floor, 1400 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20229-1145, or to Lisa Votraw, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 7th Floor, 1400 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20229-1145. E-mail: jcucina@gmail.com and jeffrey.cucina@cbp.dhs.gov or lisa.m.votraw@cbp.dhs.gov
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeffrey M. Cucina, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 7th Floor, 1400 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20229-1145, or to Lisa Votraw, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 7th Floor, 1400 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20229-1145. E-mail: jcucina@gmail.com and jeffrey.cucina@cbp.dhs.gov or lisa.m.votraw@cbp.dhs.gov
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Extract

It is often said that the federal government needs to be more like the private sector (Brooks, 2013; Campbell, 2011; Harvey, 2012; Miller, 2013; Neal, 2013; Schnurer, 2013). However, after reading Jones and Stout's (2015) summary of private-sector antinepotism policies, we wonder whether the opposite is true when it comes to nepotism and cronyism: Should the private sector be more like the federal government? According to Jones and Stout, many organizations have antinepotism policies that prohibit the employment of the friends and family of current employees. We believe that these policies might go too far, and we propose that the policies used by the federal government could serve as a model for private-sector organizations. We also think that the federal government can shed some light on why organizations want to prohibit nepotism and cronyism.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 45 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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