Familial Reputation, Bias and Impartial Arbitrators “on the Field”*

Abstract

Those with intra-organisational familial links often advance more quickly due to nepotism. We harness a large database from a natural setting relating to a specific paternal mechanism in professional sport; with our results suggesting that when external arbitrators are utilised as a tool to ensure fairness of assessments, there is effectively no evidence of performance evaluation bias in favour of subjects with the internal benefit of family reputation. This suggests that impartial assessors may be an appropriate method of safeguarding against nepotism within organisations. However, there is still some weak evidence that the influence of the agent's family name can itself still make a difference.