Nov 6, 2014

Who is the loser if there’s triumph of favoritism in an organization?

Favoritism is the display of partiality toward certain individual or group of individuals. Unfortunately some managers succumb to this behavioral trap. They favor individuals or group of individuals in their organization without regard to the negative effect that it will create to their organization.  

For example during job promotion; there are many instances most especially in government   that an employee is not promoted based on his/her competence. He is promoted because he has connections or he is a favorite of some powerful people in the organization. This person is promoted not based on what he knows about the job, his promotion is anchored on his connections.

Who is the loser if there’s a triumph of favoritism in an organization? The first loser here is the person who exercised favoritism and the second is organization itself.  Consider here the damage that is done to his reputation and the dysfunction that it creates to the organization. This is one of the many negative effects when someone pushes his weight around just to get what he wants.

The second loser is the person who was promoted based on his powerful connections. There would be negative remarks about himself and questions also about his competence would arise. The third loser is the human resource manager. What if the competent person who was not promoted would question the decision of the human resource manager? What if there would be a groundswell of support coming from the employees union for this deserving person who was not promoted?   

Favoritism in organization is immoral because it will sooner or later destroy the organization. Just imagine an organization being run by undeserving employees and visualize the havoc that it will create in the organization. - Marino J. Dasmarinas