Quickly I realized that a short message would not do justice to the complexity around it. To start answering in meaningful way, I’d need more than a WhatsApp bubble – and here I thought this format would strike the balance, before we finally catch up in person for a lengthy conversation! So here is to Ulf and a lot of other friends in armour (and without) who give me food for thought.

So, first things first: what is WEIRD? The acronym stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The irony is that WEIRD countries, statistically speaking, do not represent most of the world’s population (they are, indeed, more odd and weird). Yet, thanks to data availability and research traditions, they dominate the literature. Segmenting the world into WEIRD and non-WEIRD may be one way to approach nepotism – but it is hardly the only one. With my passion for intercultural comparisons, I even considered framing my whole systematic literature review as “Nepotism Around the World” – dissecting shades, roles, and perceptions across cultures. Although my final framing is different, the idea still fascinates me, and a cosy blog feels like the right place to explore it.

Another conceivable lens is evolutionary vs. socio-cultural. From an evolutionary corner, there isn’t really a debate about whether nepotism is an “issue” – if it exists, I write these lines and you read them, this in itself is proof that it has been serving a useful function. Socio-cultural approaches, by contrast, open up dimensions upon dimensions of evaluation: Why do we use it? Is it fair? What is “fair”? Is it good or bad? What about the long run? Should we care about the long run? What is the most essential?

At the latest at this point, cultural traditions matter. A Confucian heritage emphasizes family embeddedness, relational duties, and loyalty. Nepotism, in that frame, can be seen as a responsibility rather than corruption. The Aristotelian tradition, by contrast, emphasizes universal norms and impersonal fairness – a context where nepotism is more readily equated with bias or cronyism. Yet, the mapping is not neat, unless we insist on forcing a square peg into a round hole: not all Confucian cultures are non-WEIRD (Japan and South Korea are clear counterexamples), and not all Aristotelian traditions are WEIRD (consider parts of Southern Europe or Latin America).

The Protestant ethos adds another layer, cutting across both WEIRD and non-WEIRD, Confucian and Aristotelian. Max Weber famously connected it to capitalism and the “calling,” but in practice it has produced very different attitudes: sometimes a rejection of nepotism in favor of merit, sometimes its justification as stewardship of family enterprise. And we don’t even want to start the discussion on the role of bureaucracy…

Looking at nearly a hundred articles on nepotism in family businesses, I see patterns, but also contradictions. Even within one country – and sometimes within one organization – nepotism changes its role and colour depending on stage and context. While in politics it may be almost universally condemned, in a family firm it may travel the whole spectrum. Under some circumstances it is indeed a problem; under others, it can be a competitive advantage.

So, is nepotism only a WEIRD “issue”? Most probably not, but for me it is not the point and I would really like to take the debate beyond good and evil as what it means for an individual, an organisation and a society, whether it is condemned or celebrated, and how it functions, depends on a broad set of parameters – and the cultural lens invites us to the tip of this lava-hot iceberg.