In the online discourse, there’s a debate raging that pits “MEI” (that is, merit, excellence, and intelligence) against “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion).
If you’re doom-scrolling, you may have gotten the impression that DEI prioritises providing benefits or special treatment to people who have not earned opportunities, rather than giving opportunities to the most deserving, as MEI purports to do.
Let’s be direct: this dichotomy is entirely made up.
DEI has never been about providing unfair advantages, but rather is an approach that seeks to create the structural conditions to enable everyone to perform their best.
It’s not a particularly controversial idea that people should be treated fairly, that discrimination is bad, and that people who are most capable should be provided ample opportunity to have impact.
The current debate about “meritocracy” is creating a stir where none need to exist.
The idea of meritocracy was always a joke
Did you know that the term “meritocracy” was invented as a scathing critique by British sociologists to describe social systems that appeared equal but were anything but?
While the term was coined earlier, Michael Young’s 1958 The Rise of Meritocracy was a satirical look at the British education system, and the term was used throughout the 1960s as a way to poke fun at the “American Dream” of equal opportunity in the face of deeply discriminatory political, social, and employment systems.
Aubrey Blanche is also Culture Amp’s Global Head of Equitable Design & Impact
In the last few decades, the term has lost its original farcical meaning, with many people now believing it’s an ideal and achievable state despite all evidence to the contrary.
To put it simply, meritocracy isn’t possible without considering the unfair way that our institutions systematically disadvantage people from specific groups. Data shows how unlevel the playing field is: In Australia, women are paid on average more than 18% less than their male counterparts with similar patterns in the US (despite 21% of men not believing the pay gap exists).
Adding to that the prevalence of name-based discrimination for Black candidates and the prevalence of harassment of transgender people in the workplace – it’s clear to see there is a lot more than individual work and accomplishment that determines the opportunities an individual gets at work. Organizations cannot ensure that everyone is treated fairly unless they first accept the status quo that they are very likely not, measure how that specifically manifests in their context, and take proactive steps to mitigate prejudices and biases that are present in their companies.
And the reality is that achieving organisational fairness is made harder by advocating for a “meritocracy”. Benard & Castilla show that something called the “paradox of meritocracy” leads to significantly biased outcomes.
Their research uncovered that when companies advocate for meritocracy, it often creates complacency around managers’ own biases, leading to decisions that favour male employees over equally qualified women.
More research on the topic of merit suggests that individuals often define “merit” in ways that align to the qualities socially advantaged groups already possess, and often rely on stereotypes to shape expectations (and thus evaluations) of individual merit. Put simply, there is very little evidence that merit is an objective concept.
Focusing on equity allows us to reward merit
But it turns out that all is not lost if our goal is to ensure that people are given the opportunities they deserve based on their capabilities. We just need to turn our attention from a focus on the individual to a focus on the environment.
As Michael Sandel has shown, focusing on the individual can often obscure the role that the context–or even luck–has played in an individual’s ability to perform.
Research by Culture Amp shows that manager skill and leadership effectiveness play enormous roles in the performance of individual contributors, challenging the idea that individual capability is even a good predictor of individual performance or impact.
What, then, does it look like to focus on structural equity as a way to enable individual performance? Investing in building organisational systems that promote fairness and equity ultimately promote equal opportunity, and maximise the chances of individual, team, and organisational performance. Organisations that want their companies to be meritocracies shouldn’t just talk about it. They should:
- Prioritise transparency and structure in their performance, promotion, and pay processes
- Regularly measure the outcomes of those processes and the employee experience
- Proactively address where measurements suggest bias or disparate treatment may exist
At the end of the day, most people would argue that an organisation that presents opportunity fairly for the most qualified candidate or employee is desirable. But the current discourse which pits the idea of merit against equity paints a false picture around what is a straightforward, and uncontroversial, goal. If individuals and organisations truly want to build a company–or a world–where the best succeed, that starts by doing meritocracy (by way of equity), not just idealising it.
- Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano is a startup investor and advisor and The Mathpath (Math Nerd + Empath), specialising in developing and scaling teams and processes to achieve responsible business growth objectives.
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