The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations

Abstract

In this article, we develop and empirically test the 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; we call this the “paradox of meritocracy.” To assess this effect, we conducted three experiments with a total of 445 participants with managerial experience who were asked to make bonus, promotion, and termination recommendations for several employee profiles. We manipulated both the gender of the employees being evaluated and whether the company's core values emphasized meritocracy in evaluations and compensation. The main finding is consistent across the three studies: when an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. This finding demonstrates that the pursuit of meritocracy at the workplace may be more difficult than it first appears and that there may be unrecognized risks behind certain organizational efforts used to reward merit. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms leading to the paradox of meritocracy effect as well as the scope conditions under which we expect the effect to occur.

Can Doctors Maintain Good Character? An Examination of Physician Lives

“…Another study (Castilla 2010) showed that Bbias can be triggered by attempts to reduce it, particularly in organizational contexts that emphasize meritocratic values.^This is to say, that organizations that explicitly tout meritocratic values, may end up committing more harm against the already disadvantaged, all the while, maintaining their belief that bonuses and raises are awarded on basis of hard work. 8 Here is a sample of one such encounter of a physician with a cancer-patient faced with their impending mortality: Patient: BI don't know what the average person does in 2 years, 3 years, a year?^Physician: BI think that … you certainly could live 2 or 3 years.…”

Modern discrimination: how perpetrators and targets interactively perpetuate social disadvantage

“…This has revealed that people tend to under-estimate rather than over-estimating the occurrence of group-level discrimination [30]. Additionally, the presence of representatives of undervalued groups [31], or of measures aiming to secure equal treatment, for instance in Modern discrimination 7 organizations, paradoxically makes us less vigilant against bias, and less likely to note discrimination when it occurs [32] …”

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

“…Much sociological and organizational theory (Reskin 2000;Reskin and Branch McBrier 2000;Bielby 2000;Reskin 2003;Dobbin 2009), supported by a growing body of empirical research (Huffman 1995;Kalev, Dobbin and Kelly 2006;Castilla 2008;Kalev 2009;Castilla and Benard 2010), suggests that it does. This work situates much employment discrimination not in the conscious actions of bigoted managers but in the unconscious impact of cognitive biases, deployed through personnel policies that fail to take such biases into account.…”

“…On balance, these studies find many of the theorized effects. It is not enough simply to tell people that their actions should be meritocratic (Castilla and Benard 2010), some best practices are better than others (Kalev et al 2006), and such policies seem stronger when there are outside parties who can hold policymakers accountable (Edelman 1992;Huffman 1995;Kalev et al 2006). These nuances notwithstanding, formal operating procedures that limit managers' discretion in hiring, retention and promotion seem to be associated with greater opportunities for women and ethnic minorities in firms.…”

“…In that particular case, it was the move away from traditional (and traditionally gender--typed) divisions of labor that indirectly opened up such opportunities. Castilla and Benard's (2010) experiments into the effects of meritocracy on 14 performance evaluations show that stressing managers' accountability for their actions is sufficient to dampen gender discrimination in awarding performance bonuses, without mentioning gender equity as such. In these and other studies it is the indirect effects of rationalizing personnel practices and limiting managers' discretion that is theorized to drive much of the observed changes.…”