1.5.9.8 Equality of Merit

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

Is a meritocracy an example of equality?  A meritocracy is a society in which most people are chosen for a job or other benefits based on merit, ie who has the most relevant qualifications and experience or is the most suitable on similar, supposedly more objective, grounds..

●   In some workplaces, selection for a job depends on your social status (eg race, religion, class, caste or wealth).  In some it depends on your length of service – seniority – in which the person with the longest period of service gets the job. 

●   Such unfair rules have been explicitly applied in the colonial service of colonizing countries, and in the public service, ie government departments and agencies.  These rules mean that the best or most capable person doesn’t necessarily get the job, but also that job candidates aren’t being treated as equals. 

●   To correct these failings many workplaces now have a policy that job appointments and promotions must be based on merit, meaning the best or most capable candidate should be appointed to the job, regardless of their social status or seniority.  This meritocracy sounds fairer and should be more productive. 

●   But many suggest that the meritocracy is unfair to those whose education or work experience has been held back because of their social status, or poverty, so that individuals from minorities or oppressed groups are under-represented in better paying or higher status jobs.

●   To correct these failings many workplaces now have a policy to, apparently, NOT select all people on merit, but to select some because of their (supposedly low) social status, not in spite of it. 

*    There is still a selection process: underlying the process is the notion that the (disadvantaged) candidate is selected on the basis that had it not been for their minority status they probably would have been successful on merit alone.  We aren’t obliged to accept irresponsible idiots into our workplaces and homes: some merit criteria still apply.

*    On the downside, this allows those from the majority or supposedly better off to claim that they have been unfairly discriminated against, and that people are getting jobs or promotions just because they are in a minority group.  The workplace can respond that most jobs are still selected on merit and ask that the workers accept that some candidates succeed on other grounds but are still deserving.    

*    The workplace can also legitimately say that the added productivity and justice that selecting on merit provides, despite being useful effecting values, are not absolute values, and must be countered by improving, at least for some, the equality of access of the oppressed.  As societies become more affluent, and businesses become more efficient and effective, with higher profits compared to wages, productivity as an effecting value becomes less significant. 

*    Perceived fairness remains important so once again one goal must be balanced against another.

●   And in a small number of cases, for example selecting a pastoral care worker for an indigenous community, being a member of that community, with lived experience of the problems they face, can enable a candidate to do the job better than someone else, even if in other respects, on paper, they seem better qualified.  The lived experience can be merit based, outranking other criteria.

So a modified meritocracy appears to be a sufficiently good model for workplace recruitment and many other organizations.