Meritocracy -- A Myth or A Paradox?

                 Meritocracy -- A Myth or A Paradox?

                                          Dr. KS Dhillon

Introduction

Meritocracy is a term which was first introduced by Michael Young in his 1958 dystopian satirical book ‘The Rise of the Meritocracy’ [1]. Young introduced the formula that “IQ + effort = merit”. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines meritocracy as ‘a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement’ [2].

There is a widespread belief that rewards in life such as university admissions, jobs, money, and power should be skill and effort based. This belief has made meritocracy a leading social ideal.
Many who believe in meritocracy are of the opinion that hereditary aristocracy based on birth should be cast aside to create a level playing field. Merit is the product of talent (IQ) plus determined effort (effort).  Hence many believe that merit rather than luck determines success or failure. There are others who believe that this assumption is demonstrably false because talent and the capacity for determined effort depend to a large extent on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing. To have the required genetic endowments and upbringing is, most of the time, a matter of chance [3].

There are two sides to the issue of meritocracy, the objective, and subjective side. The objective side looks at whether social positions in society are distributed according to academic achievement since academic achievement is considered as an indicator of individual merit. The subjective side looks at whether people are convinced that the diplomas obtained by education are acquired through merit and that later in life the best-educated individuals get the best social positions.

Does meritocracy exist? Is it a myth? 

This is a very important question considering that there is a shift to meritocratic employment strategies across the world. Many people believe that the world is meritocratic and they also believe that the world should be run meritocratically. A 2009 British Social Attitudes survey in the UK found that 84 percent of respondents were of the opinion that hard work is essential and very important if one has to get ahead in life [4]. Similarly, a survey by the Brookings Institute (USA) in 2016 found that 69 percent of Americans believed that people are rewarded for intelligence and skill.

The respondents in both UK and USA believed that factors, such as luck and having a wealthy background were less important. Similar thoughts are apparently popular around the world [3].
Many around the world believe that rewards in life such as university admissions, jobs, money, and power should be based on skill and effort rather than lottery of birth or hereditary aristocracy.
Intellectuals such as McManus, for example, believe that Britain is a meritocracy, with its social class related strongly to intelligence [5]. He also believes that intellectual ability is a major predictor of school examination results and hence entrance to universities.

Saunders [6] on the other hand believed that upward social mobility is due to one's ability rather than on formal qualifications alone. Brighter people he believes, tend to perform better in exams as well as in the labour market. He believed that one can work one's way out of a position in low social class if one is able and motivated enough.

Though the infrastructure for this upward mobility exits, there is not much such upward mobility from the working class to the middle class. The reason why the middle-class individuals can get their children into the same social class in society is because their children are equally motivated as them and the children of working class lack the ability and motivation to advance in society. Saunders beliefs offer ‘a social-Darwinian justification to social class inequalities and relative class mobility, whereby the ‘fittest’ and ablest get a better share of the resources available in a social system’ [7]. His understanding of meritocracy hence is compatible with a market-driven, competitive society.
Though there are different definitions of merit and irrespective of how one defines merit, the impact of merit on upward social mobility remains limited.

Though educational qualifications are important, they are not sufficient to help a person in securing access to a better social position in society [7].   This so-called ‘meritocratic failure’ is often attributed to the role the family plays in a given individuals life. Studies show that ‘parents income and cultural status’ is closely related to an individual's elite private school education and elite university education [7]. This type of education rather than merit help individuals land the highest paying jobs and high social positions in society.

Sadly in many societies equality of opportunities and education do not exist for meritocracy to work. Even if more opportunities were provided to working-class children through education, the structural and cultural inequalities will remain, preventing upward social mobility for these class of individuals [7].

Many believe that meritocracy, as defined by most people, is a myth. More people apparently advance in life due to unquantifiable and unpredictable random factors, such as relatives, friends, chance meetings, etc, rather than from the knowledge, IQ and the qualification that they possess [8]. Discrimination exists in most societies where privileged groups, privileged races and social elites such as the middle class, the whites, males and heterosexuals, progress upwards much more easily and faster than other groups or individuals [8].

Connections with people in high positions in government and private sector can ensure career progression and advancement in social status more than qualifications or intelligence can. Rich parents can buy entrance into elite schools and universities as well as secure jobs in elite professions, for their children, regardless of their innate intelligence [8].

The existence of meritocracy, therefore, appears to be a myth, although it is widely held that merit rather than luck ultimately determines success or failure. Some would go to the extent of saying merit itself is largely the result of luck. Genetic endowments and upbring provides the talent and grit needed for success in life. In essence, the concept of meritocracy, therefore, is something that can to a large extent be inherited and not earned over generations. Some have described meritocracy as a long-standing delusion of which we hear everyday and everywhere [9].

Notwithstanding the myth of meritocracy, meritocracy has been described as a paradox by others.

The Paradox of Meritocracy

Castilla and Benard [10] coined the phrase “paradox of meritocracy”. In an ideal meritocratic system every individual irrespective of their race, gender and class should have an equal opportunity to progress and advance in the society based on their individual merit and effort [10]. Many researchers believe that the system does work on the basis of merit [11,12,13].

Some believe that meritocracy has become the culture in most advanced capitalist countries and this culture provides fair and legitimate distribution of rewards in most organizations [14,15,16].
Despite the belief of many that the meritocracy system does exist and does work in most organizations, there are others who believe that inequalities exist at the workplace in organizations which have adopted merit-based programs [17].

Castilla and Benard [10] developed and tested a ‘theoretical argument that when an organizational culture promotes meritocracy (compared with when it does not), managers in that organization may ironically show greater bias in favor of men over equally performing women in translating employee performance evaluations into rewards and other key career outcomes’.

They conducted three experiments involving 445 participants who had managerial skills. They were asked to make recommendations for promotion, bonus, and job termination based on several employee profiles. They manipulated the gender of the employees who were being evaluated and they also manipulated the companies whose core values emphasized meritocracy in evaluations and compensation with that which did not. Their findings were consistent across all three studies. They found that in organizations which were labeled as meritocratic, the managerial individuals preferred male employees over equally qualified female employees. The males were given a larger monetary reward as compared to equally qualified female employees in meritocratic organization. In non-meritocratic organizations, no such discrimination was found.

The reason for this paradox is not clear but there are a couple of mechanisms which make it possible. One is the role of moral credentials. When an individual has established his moral credentials as a non-prejudiced person he is more prone to express prejudiced attitudes [18]. In organizations where there is a strong belief that the organization is meritocratic, the managers who also endorse this belief, tend to do moral credentialing which make bias more likely when dealing with their employees. The culture in these organizations convinces the managers to believe that they are unbiased since the are a meritocratic organization. This then prevents them from having insight into their own prejudices. When the managers start to believe that they are unbiased and fair, than they become convinced that their motivations will not be questioned and their actions will not be interpreted as prejudiced. In such situations, they feel less constrained by social norms and they allow their decisions to be influenced by stereotypes which leads to discrimination in the organization [10].

The other mechanism is the sense of personal objectivity. Uhlmann and Cohen [19] believe that personal objectivity dictates the extent to which an individual acts on his/her beliefs. This will also include stereotypical beliefs. Their work showed that when people feel objective, they become
more confident that their beliefs are correct and they are more likely to act on their beliefs. Hence, when people hold negative stereotypes about women at the workplace, they are likely to express these stereotypes in employment decisions.

Crandall and Eshleman [20]  coined the term “justification-suppression model” (JSM) of prejudice. According to Crandall and Eshleman their JSM shows that there are several ‘social, cultural, cognitive, and developmental factors’ which create a variety of prejudices in people, including, ‘racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, patriotic, and so on’.  These  factors create so called "genuine" prejudices. These genuine prejudices are negative reactions which cannot be seen but are powerful and have strong motivational forces. Other forces such as social norms, personal  standards, beliefs and values can suppress these prejudices. Suppressed prejudices can be expressed when liberated by beliefs, ideologies and attributions. Justification processes facilitates the expression of these prejudice, and ‘justification allows expression of prejudice without guilt or shame’. This leads to discrimination at the workplace [20].

Without doubt managers in a meritocratic organization believe that their decisions are impartial and they apply stereotypes in their employment decisions. The prejudices maybe racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or others. This paradox of meritocracy is real and exits in most so called meritocratic organizations.

Meritocracy in Malaysia

‘We hold these truths to be self–evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
                                                                    - Thomas Jefferson

But in Malaysia, all are not created equal. Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia grants the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (The King) responsibility for safeguarding the special position of the malays and the bumiputras. The bumiputras are granted special rights in the form of reserved slots in local universities, colleges and other public education institutions. They also have special land reservations and places are set aside for the bumiputras especially the malays in the civil and military services. The constitution also provides for special privileges for the bumiputras in terms of scholarship and business permits. The article 153 led to the implementation of affirmative action policies which benefit only the bumiputras. This has created a racialist distinction between malaysians of different ethnic background. It is rather difficult to balance meritocracy with affirmative action.

After the May 1969 riots National Operations Council (NOC) was set up to rule the country until 1971. The NOC proposed that the Sedition Act be amended to make questioning of Article 153 illegal. Parliament passed the  amendments as law when it reconvened in 1971. In line with the Article 153, first the National Economic Policy (NEP) and later the National Development Policy (NDP) was introduced to assist the malays and the bumiputras.

 In 2003, the then prime minister Mahathir began to remind the malays to  abandon their "crutches," and he implemented a policy of "meritocracy". Some branded this “meritocracy” as a sham because it divided students into two streams prior to university admission. The bumiputras went colleges or universities where they did a matriculation course and the non-malays had to do the Sijil Tinggi Pelajaran Malaysia (STPM) examination which was considered to be much more difficult and competitive examination as compared to the matriculation examination.

The idea of implementing total meritocracy in Malaysia does and will continue to face strong resistance and objections from some sections of the Malaysian society. The main opposition to the full implementation of meritocracy is from politicians who want to maintain unity among the malays so that UMNO can maintain their dominant position to have control over the government and administration of the country [21].

Conclusion

The word meritocracy was first coined by Michael Young in 1958. It is supposed to be a system where talented people move upward in society based on their achievement. Though many around the world believe that rewards in life such as university admissions, jobs, money and power should be based on skill and effort rather than lottery of birth or hereditary aristocracy. The reality is that the impact of merit on upward social mobility remains limited.

More people advance in life due to random factors, such as relatives, friends, chance meetings etc, rather than from the knowledge, IQ and the qualification that they posses. Therefore many believe that meritocracy as defined by most people is a myth.

There is discrimination in most societies where privileged groups, privileged races and social elites progress upwards much more easily and faster than other groups or individual.

Some have described meritocracy as a paradox because in meritocratic organization there is more discrimination then in non-meritocratic organizations.

In Malaysia all are ‘not equal’ and this inequality is guaranteed by our constitution. Our government’s affirmative policies to raise the economic standard of the bumiputras are contradictory the concept of meritocracy. The main opposition to the implementation of meritocracy in Malaysia comes from politicians who want to remain in power and control the government and administration of the country. Meritocracy is unlikely to be implemented in malaysia in the near or distant future.

References

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2. Merriam-Webster dictionary at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meritocracy. Accessed on 9/3/19.
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21. Hamzah Bin Ali. The Politics of Meritocracy in Malaysia at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a420243.pdf accessed on 2/4/19.