Relatives in the same university faculty: nepotism or merit?

Giovanni Abramo (), Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo () and Francesco Rosati ()
Additional contact information
Giovanni Abramo: National Research Council of Italy
Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo: University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
Francesco Rosati: University of Rome “Tor Vergata”

Scientometrics, 2014, vol. 101, issue 1, No 34, 737-749

Abstract: Abstract In many countries culture, practice or regulations inhibit the co-presence of relatives within the university faculty. We test the legitimacy of such attitudes and provisions, investigating the phenomenon of nepotism in Italy, a nation with high rates of favoritism. We compare the individual research performance of “children” who have “parents” in the same university against that of the “non-children” with the same academic rank and seniority, in the same field. The results show non-significant differences in performance. Analyses of career advancement show that children’s research performance is on average superior to that of their colleagues who did not advance. The study’s findings do not rule out the existence of nepotism, which has been actually recorded in a low percentage of cases, but do not prove either the most serious presumed consequences of nepotism, namely that relatives who are poor performers are getting ahead of non-relatives who are better performers. In light of these results, many attitudes and norms concerning parental ties in academia should be reconsidered.

Keywords: Nepotism; Research evaluation; Productivity; Bibliometrics; Universities; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-014-1273-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:101:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1273-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1273-z

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().