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PurposeThis paper aims to explore how female academics use cronyism to cope with the lack of emancipative support resulting from their intense teaching and research duties, poor representation at senior administrative levels and their exhausting familial commitments.Design/methodology/approachQualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 female academics working full-time at four public universities in Egypt.FindingsThe findings showed that the low action resources (considering their unreasonable teaching loads, research requirements and supervision engagements), emancipative values (the unfair representation of female academics at senior administrative levels) and civic entitlement (universities not serious about promoting gender equality) are perceived by female academics as a lack of empowerment that necessitates their adoption of cronyism as their main coping strategy. Moreover, in male-dominated societies, female academics who do not have the power to shape their work-related status tend to use undesirable behaviours such as cronyism to mitigate the negative consequences of the shocks they encounter.Originality/valueThis paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management in which empirical studies on the relationship between cronyism, emancipation and career shocks have been limited so far.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate how cronyism is employed by some married female faculty to secure workplace rights and privileges.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research design is employed and interviews were conducted with 32 female academics working at four different universities.FindingsThe narrative demonstrates the gendered use of cronyism at work – pre-COVID-19, during which female academics had to work full-time and be present on school campuses, and after COVID-19 pandemic, when academic working conditions changed due to the lockdown of university campuses and the reliance on remote online protocols to fulfil academic duties. The paper shows an increased use of cronyism as a mechanism to reduce heavy workloads. This type of cronyism is known as the expectation of mutual favour cronyism, which means that benefits are exchanged between a female academic and the chair of her department and/or the school rector, but the interests of the university they work in are not taken into consideration.Originality/valueVirtually, no research exists on the sociocultural determinants of nepotism that undermine the professional performance of female academics at work. The authors draw on social exchange theory and the norm of negative reciprocity to identify the conditions under which social capital is undermined. The results have important implications for theory, practice and future research.

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