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Despite noted instances of organizational cronyism in public sector Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), there is a lack of empirical evidence on its detrimental outcomes. The present investigation tested the impact of organizational cronyism on knowledge hiding via the mediating role of moral disengagement and moderating role of egoistic climate.

A multi-stage random sample was drawn from the 312 teaching faculty working in HEIs of Lahore, Pakistan in three waves. M-plus was used to validate a longitudinal moderated mediation model based on Structural Equation Modeling.

The results showed that organizational cronyism leads to knowledge hiding. In addition, it was substantiated that moral disengagement acts as a mediator in the relationship between organizational cronyism and knowledge hiding. The strengthening impact of an egoistic climate was found in the direct and indirect association between organizational cronyism, moral disengagement, and knowledge hiding.

There is a dearth of research on the consequences of organizational cronyism and the understanding of the factors that underlie this association is limited. This research has bridged this gap by investigating the role of moral disengagement and egoistic climate in linking organizational cronyism and knowledge-hiding by building on social exchange and social cognitive theory.

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the cultural values which underpin the practice and acceptance of nepotism and cronyism in societies and organizations worldwide. We argue that there are advantages inherent in harnessing the resources of the social networks involved in nepotism and cronyism, but there are also major problems arising from the inequality and unfairness of these practices. A theoretical consideration of cultural values combined with illustrative cases is used to discuss nepotism and cronyism in different cultures. We suggest that nepotism and cronyism exist in all cultures but perception and discussion of these phenomena as well as the perceived gravity of their effects can vary according to the cultural values of egalitarianism and universalism, together with the economic development of the societies in which they occur.

The practice of cronyism is a pervasive problem for most businesses and a great hindrance for employees, but empirical literature on its outcomes is scant. In light of such gaps, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between organizational cronyism and employees' silence behavior through the mediating role of felt violation and the moderating role of continuance commitment.

A time-lagged cross-sectional survey comprising 226 respondents is carried out in a metropolitan city of a developing country (Lahore, Pakistan). The respondents were selected using the convenience sampling technique.

The findings reveal that organizational cronyism influences employees' silence (acquiescent and quiescent) both directly and indirectly (via felt violation). However, continuance commitment was noted to work as a boundary condition only between felt violation and quiescent silence.

Although the study deals with common method bias by collecting data in two waves, it may restrict causality. The findings not only have implications for the academicians, but also contribute to the conservation of resources theory. This study suggests organizations develop and implement a comprehensive intervention strategy that focuses on both prevention and damage control as a result of organizational cronyism.

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this study adds value to the literature by empirically investigating the outcomes of cronyism at work. Moreover, the outcomes and mechanisms under consideration have largely been ignored in the literature.

This paper examines the relationship between indigenous cultures and employee efficiency and how cronyism strengthens or weakens the relationship in the Ghanaian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in response to the employee efficiency.

This study employs a quantitative approach by a cross-sectional survey to collect data from 400 workers in ten SOEs in Ghana. The analysis is done by using descriptive statistics and hierarchical regression techniques.

The findings indicate that showing gratitude is the predominant indigenous culture in the SOEs of Ghana while irregularity (absenteeism) is not dominant. Moreover, the practice of cronyism is high. It reveals that the indigenous cultures, except for respect for the elderly, relate negatively to employee efficiency, and cronyism strengthens the relationship between indigenous cultures and employee efficiency.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence that cronyism effectively strengthens the relationship between indigenous cultures and employee efficiency in a developing country. Strategies to discourage cronyism should be the key focus of public administrators, as well as mechanisms to limit the practice of adverse indigenous cultures.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cronyism is employed by some married female faculty to secure workplace rights and privileges.

A qualitative research design is employed and interviews were conducted with 32 female academics working at four different universities.

The narrative demonstrates the gendered use of cronyism at work – pre-COVID-19, during which female academics had to work full-time and be present on school campuses, and after COVID-19 pandemic, when academic working conditions changed due to the lockdown of university campuses and the reliance on remote online protocols to fulfil academic duties. The paper shows an increased use of cronyism as a mechanism to reduce heavy workloads. This type of cronyism is known as the expectation of mutual favour cronyism, which means that benefits are exchanged between a female academic and the chair of her department and/or the school rector, but the interests of the university they work in are not taken into consideration.

Virtually, no research exists on the sociocultural determinants of nepotism that undermine the professional performance of female academics at work. The authors draw on social exchange theory and the norm of negative reciprocity to identify the conditions under which social capital is undermined. The results have important implications for theory, practice and future research.

The purpose of this study was to test the mediating influence of workplace ostracism in the relationship between organizational cronyism and social capital. In addition, the authors posited that workplace incivility would interact with cronyism to directly influence social capital, and indirectly through its effect on workplace ostracism.

Using data collected in four waves, with a time interval of six weeks between each wave, from 358 university faculty members, the authors used the PROCESS macro to test the proposed moderated mediation model.

Results indicated that workplace ostracism mediates the influence of organizational cronyism on social capital, and that workplace incivility interacts with cronyism to influence social capital directly, and indirectly through its effect on workplace ostracism.

Most studies of social capital are theoretical. The few empirical studies have focused on factors that contribute to social capital and virtually no research exists on factors that undermine social capital. Based on the premise that negative interpersonal relationships are far more powerful in explaining outcomes relative to positive interpersonal relations and the notion that “bad is stronger than good,” the authors draw on social exchange theory and the norm of negative reciprocity to test a moderated mediation model and identify a mechanism and the condition under which social capital is undermined. The results have important implications for theory, research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of Public Private Dialogues (PPD) on cronyism accounting for various cultural and governance institutions.

It proposes a number of hypotheses on: whether PPD characterized by high official representation and business representation, through mainly building trust, succeed in minimizing cronyism; whether certain cultural and governance institutions help PPD in achieving this; and in cultural settings which are originally inducing cronyism whether PPD help in minimizing cronyism. These are tested empirically using an ordinary least squares multivariate panel regression.

High official representation and high business people’s participation in PPD were found to help in minimizing cronyism in different cultures. This is arguably attributed to building trust in cultures characterized by having low general trust and low trust in governments. Accountability and transparency are significantly assisting PPD in this regard. Yet, PPD do not always succeed in taming cronyism, and in particular in ethnic fractionalized societies and societies having high collective cultures.

The biggest challenge this research faced was estimating a proxy for PPD. Better data on business associations’ participation worldwide are needed to construct a more developed proxy.

PPD with high business participation and government representation should be encouraged. The same is true for reform leading to higher levels of transparency and accountability.

Constructing a proxy for PPD that allowed meta-analysis; and investigating theoretically and empirically the effect of the interaction of PPD with various institutions on cronyism.

Why are state business relations in Egypt characterized by widely acknowledged high levels of cronyism? The purpose of this paper is to investigate the institutional factors explaining this research question with a focus on pre-2011 Egypt.

Based on a general theoretical discussion, certain institutions were proposed as being responsible. A game theoretical model is then introduced. It explains why cronyism was the best strategy for various business players in contrast to aggregating and lobbying their efforts to obtain government available resources, whether these resources are energy subsidies, public banks’ credit or regulations. Then pre-2011 Egypt is discussed as a case study. This discussion is enriched by the available literature and empirical data.

Choosing cronyism was attributed to the presence of a weak and dependent private sector, where businesspeople are unable to aggregate their power; a relatively stronger government; poor governance performance; higher levels of regime legitimization practices, such as providing generous consumer subsidies; and economic growth caused by an increase in resources rather than by governance institutional improvement. A discussion of the available literature and empirical data on pre-2011 Egypt, going over the various proposed institutional factors, helped to support these arguments.

Further empirical evidence is needed to support and modify the suggestions of this paper. More detailed indicators would have further helped this research. Moreover, more case studies, other than the case of pre-2011 Egypt, are also needed. It is hoped that this paper would encourage further research endeavors that would cover these limitations.

Governance institutional reform is needed to minimize cronyism, especially institutions such as voice and accountability, rule of law, regulatory quality and control of corruption.

This paper can explain why high levels of cronyism are witnessed in many countries of the world, including the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The region shares many institutional factors with Egypt. Governments in the MENA region have various sources of power with regard to their dependent private sectors added to the general poor performance in various governance indicators in the region.

The deep analysis conducted in this paper for the causes of Cronyism in Egypt has not been done elsewhere. This is also true for the whole MENA region. The introduced theoretical model is the first trial of this sort and should be important for future works on this topic in the MENA region and developing countries.

This paper aims to explore how female academics use cronyism to cope with the lack of emancipative support resulting from their intense teaching and research duties, poor representation at senior administrative levels and their exhausting familial commitments.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 female academics working full-time at four public universities in Egypt.

The findings showed that the low action resources (considering their unreasonable teaching loads, research requirements and supervision engagements), emancipative values (the unfair representation of female academics at senior administrative levels) and civic entitlement (universities not serious about promoting gender equality) are perceived by female academics as a lack of empowerment that necessitates their adoption of cronyism as their main coping strategy. Moreover, in male-dominated societies, female academics who do not have the power to shape their work-related status tend to use undesirable behaviours such as cronyism to mitigate the negative consequences of the shocks they encounter.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management in which empirical studies on the relationship between cronyism, emancipation and career shocks have been limited so far.

This study sought to examine the relation of cultural practices and values with favoritism and nepotism/cronyism. Additionally, this study's purpose was also to examine how trust mediates the relation between culture and favoritism.

Correlations were used for exploratory investigation into the bivariate relations between culture and favoritism and nepotism/cronyism across 97 cultures. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were then conducted to examine the cultural correlates of favoritism and nepotism/cronyism holding all other variables constant. Lastly, partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to examine the mediating role of societal levels of trust.

Bivariate correlations showed that collectivism, familism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance are positive correlates of both favoritism and nepotism/cronyism. Institutional collectivism, future orientation and trust, on the other hand, were negative correlates of favoritism and nepotism/cronyism. Uncertainty avoidance and trust were key correlates of favoritism while familism and future orientation were key correlates of nepotism/cronyism. Trust fully mediated the relation between culture and favoritism but did not mediate the relation between culture and nepotism/cronyism.

This study adds to the current body of literature on culture and favoritism. Notably, the findings regarding different key cultural correlates with respect to favoritism and nepotism/cronyism provide valuable implications for expanding our understanding of the psychological and social nuances of favoritism. Specifically, favoritism in transactions and interactions with those not bound by social commitment relationships may be explained by beliefs while interactions with those with social relationships (e.g., family and friends) may be explained by preferences.