The Relationship Among Nepotism, Leader Legitimacy, and Work Engagement: Focus on Distribution Industry

• Published in: Journal of distribution science pp. 41 - 50
• Main Authors: Mikyoung KIM, 문재승
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 한국유통과학회 01.07.2021
• Subjects: 경제학
• ISSN: 1738-3110; 2093-7717
• DOI: 10.15722/jds.19.7.202107.41

Purpose: This study aims to analyze the effect of nepotism on work engagement. In addition, this study aims to analyze the mediating effect of leader legitimacy in the relationship between nepotism and work engagement in the distribution industry. Research design, data and methodology: 236 survey data were collected and analyzed using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22. For the assessment of the goodness of fit of the models, indexes such as TLI, CFI, RMSEA were used. For hypotheses testing, we used SEM method and bootstrapping. Results: The results of this study are as follows. First, the relationship between nepotism and the employee's work engagement was not significant. Second, it was revealed that nepotism negatively affects the leader’s legitimacy. Third, it was found that a leader's legitimacy had a positive effect on the employees' work engagement. Fourth, leader legitimacy was found to mediate the relationship between nepotism and employees' work engagement. Conclusion: We found that the effect of nepotism can be changed depending on contingent factors. This study contributed to the accumulation of nepotism theory by demonstrating the process in which nepotism, which has been insufficient so far, affects outcome variables. Based on the empirical results of this study, theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research directions were discussed. KCI Citation Count: 0