About the midway point of my conversation with Robert Jones it dawned on me that, for all intents and purposes, we were discussing the summer job that helped put me through college.

I owed my employment over four summer breaks to the chief engineer of the company, the designer of the products I drilled, sanded and assembled each night on the graveyard shift.

My father.

Were it not for dear old dad I would have been spent the months of June, July and August bagging groceries at the A&P, filling ice cream cones at the local dairy bar or on the beach working on my tan.

A psychiatry professor at Missouri State University and the editor of the recently published academic study, "Nepotism in Organizations," Jones brings an outsider's view of the "difficult topic" that long ago landed me on a factory floor.

With the recovery of the job market resting on a small business sector in which 62 percent of the companies are family-owned, nepotism is additionally a subject that is increasingly difficult to ignore, Jones said.

Which isn't to say that employees on the corporate side are immune from working side by side with the boss' son, daughter, brother-in-law or third cousin four times removed on her mother's side. Jones notes that more than a third of Fortune 500 companies are controlled by or have roots with a single family.

Think Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Ford and, lest we forget, the company now known as Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Nepotism "comes and goes with the economy," Jones said. "But it's not going away."

A society that values egalitarianism over entitlement, Americans tend to be far less tolerant than their counterparts in other countries of colleagues that bring little more than a bloodline to the job.

Jones says the practice is consequently accepted more readily in cultures that place family before the almighty buck or - citing Spain as an example - the euro.

"You have to question the (American) perception" of nepotism, the professor said. "Is it a prejudice we have against people in the privileged part of our society? Do we see it as a case of one person getting preference over another?"

The presence of a relative on U.S. payrolls can create a workplace environment susceptible to tension on all sides.

Jones points out that co-workers segregate nepotists out of self-protection, fearful that a misinterpreted word or sentiment might be communicated to the company hierarchy.

"There is a lowering of morale where nepotic relationships tend to make people less happy if they are not members of the family," said Jones.

The stigma of nepotism meanwhile spurs blood-connected hires to over-compensate trying to prove their hiring was predicated on something other than birth.

Jones says nepotism is particularly prevalent in the legal and accounting professions.

But, really, no sector is exempt.

It lurks in the media (the Murdoch empire; 27-year-old network journalist Luke Russert; Arthur Sulzberger, the Kansas City Bureau Chief of The New York Times) and politics (the Kennedys, the Bushes and, in Missouri, the Blunts).

"I'm just waiting for Barack Obama's daughters to run for something," Jones said.

And for every success story on par with the resurgence of Ford under the leadership of William Clay Ford Jr., there is catastrophic failure.

August Anheuser Busch IV, anyone?

Americans may chafe about nepotism, but Jones says there isn't much anyone can do but grin, bear and make the most of the situation.

The court system has for the most part turned back the legal challenges to nepotic hiring mounted for the most part by labor organizations.

There is no defining research that demonstrates conclusively whether nepotism ultimately harms or hurts a company, Jones added.

There's little doubt about the evaluation of my performance as a factory worker.

My father was superb with numbers and a master of the calibrations that went into manufacturing precision power transmission equipment.

His son, on a path to becoming a professional writer, at this late date was yet to master the art of using a screwdriver, never mind a micrometer.

Enough said.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Mr. President, we welcome any good news on the jobs front. But it is thanks to the innovation of the American people in the private sector and not to you." - Republican presidential nominee frontrunner Mitt Romney's response to job gains that dropped U.S. unemployment to 8.3 percent in January.

Source: USA Today

BY THE NUMBERS

54 percent - Percentage of Americans laid off permanently by the recession in 2009 (a percentage that has since improved to 49 percent).

38 percent - The average quarterly percentage of Americans laid off permanently in the early 1980s during the worst previous economic downturn.

Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts

FINAL WORD

"After they spent two years rooting for economic failure, House Republicans can't decide how to handle themselves with good news on the economy. They can't fall back to talking about what they've done to create jobs, because they haven't done anything." - Democratic Congressional aide on the GOP reaction to the improved unemployment rate.

Source: The Hill