Legal Definitions - nepotism

Nepotism refers to the practice where an individual in a position of authority uses their power or influence to grant unfair advantages or preferential treatment to their family members, particularly in professional or public contexts. This often occurs in areas such as employment, promotions, contracts, or admissions, where decisions should ideally be based on merit, qualifications, or competitive processes.

• Imagine a department head at a large corporation who is responsible for hiring a new project manager. Despite several highly qualified external applicants with extensive experience, the department head decides to hire their niece, who has recently graduated and lacks relevant experience for the role. The niece is given the position over candidates who were objectively more qualified.

  This illustrates nepotism because the department head, using their official authority, bestowed an employment favor (the job) upon a relative (their niece) without prioritizing merit or qualifications.

• Consider a city council member who is part of a committee overseeing the awarding of municipal construction contracts. When a new contract for road repairs comes up, the council member strongly advocates for and ultimately helps secure the contract for a construction company owned by their brother-in-law, even though other companies submitted bids that were lower in cost and had stronger performance records.

  This is an example of nepotism because the council member used their official influence to grant a business advantage (the contract) to a relative (their brother-in-law's company), bypassing a fair competitive process.

• A university admissions director has the final say on a limited number of spots in a highly competitive graduate program. When their child applies to the program, despite having a lower GPA and fewer extracurricular achievements than many other applicants, the director ensures their child is admitted, overriding the recommendations of the admissions committee.

  This demonstrates nepotism as the admissions director leveraged their official position to provide an unfair advantage (admission to a competitive program) to a family member (their child), disregarding the merit-based criteria applied to other candidates.