The idea of meritocracy says that in order for people to advance in institutional and social life, they should earn that privilege through applying their means of contribution in the domain that they inhabit. The benefits that accrue from this system include having the best and most qualified people in roles that meet their standard of competence, the building of character in the journey of becoming a person who deserves the success they achieve, and the pushing back of our limits of human potential as people strive (and are incentivised by this system) to become all that they can be. In this way of thinking about how we organise our institutions, there is no room for nepotism, tokenism or flawed attempts at ensuring equity such as ‘equality of outcome’ initiatives.
Despite the clear progress that such a system enables, in the age of entitlement that we live in, the idea of meritocracy has become unpopular. The argument against it goes along the lines that it is in effect a façade beneath which structural and other societal barriers exist that prevent individuals from advancing in the way that equality would demand. In some ways I am empathetic to this view. In the world of work, there are no doubt institutions that are run dysfunctionally to limit opportunities for a range of people who would otherwise be qualified for roles or deserving of an opportunity based on some other qualities that they possess. In some of these organisations, what is playing out is a mirror-tocracy. So what do I mean by that term?
In a mirror-tocracy, the people who get ahead are not those who work the hardest or care most about the clientele they serve. Instead, those that advance are individuals who most remind the leaders and decision makers of themselves. In this ego driven system of promotion and succession, those who are selected for greater opportunity share at least one, and often many, of the identity markers which characterise those who are in charge. Among these identity categories are gender, race, political affiliation, religious beliefs, educational lineage, membership to other elite institutions, or more broadly, social class. In the legal field in which I work, it is not uncommon for hiring partners at firms to give preference to graduates from the same university that they studied at. Perhaps part of their justification for that is familiarity with the standard of education that they have attained, or a nostalgic kinship of sorts that draws on shared relational ties, but at the deeper level, it is likely that less flattering vulnerabilities are animating those unconscious biases and selection decisions.
Some of those vulnerabilities can include a false pride in the superiority of one’s pedigree, or the fear of losing power to a group of outsiders. On this first point, I recall former US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remarking (quite publically) that he wouldn’t have hired one of the best law clerks he ever had if he had known of the law school that the clerk had attended (Scalia attended two of the finest law schools in the US: Georgetown and Harvard, and inherited the clerk – from the less prestigious Ohio State law school – from another judge). On the point of fearing the loss of power to an outgroup, we see this quite clearly in the politicised nature of the judicial selection process in the US. Whether those in power are Democrats or Republicans, a prerequisite for those who are selected for judicial positions will be the sharing of the fundamental ideological or philosophical perspectives of the party in office (so as to preserve their balance of power in the court that allows them to enact their policy objectives through the judgements made). While the executive and judicial branches of government are meant to remain separate to preserve independence, accountability and credibility in the decisions made, in a co-opted and thus corrupted system, the tendrils of one organ will inevitably find permission to extend its reach to the heart of many others.
Through overreach such as this, and other abuses of power to increase the amount of it that can be wielded at the expense of others, the cultures of these institutions erode to attract those who have the same self-serving motivation to manipulate others or the system in order to enrich themselves. No matter what the domain, a broken system is the light that entices the moths who desire to game it for their own purposes. I would be willing to bet that where you work, there will be a handful, and often more, of disengaged individuals who are working to a personal agenda that doesn’t coincide with the collective mission that they signed up to advance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take many of these people to have a pervasive negative effect on the people around them and sabotage their morale or the larger Esprit de Corps. So how did these malcontents get to where they are in the first place?
Dr. L. Christian Duperouzel 