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Abstract

This article provides insights into the role of minority employees in reproducing and contesting the discourse of meritocracy in contemporary organizations. It also discusses the effects the contestation of meritocracy, or the lack thereof, has on organizational power relations and on the situation of individuals who are the target of meritocratic policies. Empirically, we address the experiences of a growing category of workers—women academics of non-UK origin—employed within UK business schools. Based on the analysis of narratives focusing on the career trajectories of our research participants, we show how the belief in, and paradoxically the questioning of, meritocratic principles contribute to the reproduction of inequalities. We conclude that, as a result of the overarching perpetuation, and only limited challenging of, extant power relations in organizations, both the current definitions of merit and the application of meritocratic principles remain unchanged.

Keywords

academics business schools discourse foreign women meritocracy

In his 1958 dystopia The Rise of Meritocracy, Michael Young used the term ‘meritocracy’ in a pejorative sense, warning against the inequalities that a meritocratic system produces and perpetuates. Generally, however, the term has come to denote a positive ideal, a set of principles to which the broader society and organizations within it should aspire and which they should apply. This positive assessment and taken-for-grantedness of meritocratic rules have had a strong effect on the logic governing organizations in Western societies, and in particular in the UK, in that the policies addressing staff recruitment and progression have been developed in line with meritocratic premises. Currently, these premises are rarely challenged, despite the fact that the spread of meritocratic principles has not brought about greater equality of opportunities and/or outcomes. Indeed, the UK remains characterized by ‘deep-seated and systematic differences in economic outcomes’ along lines of gender, ethnicity, social class and geographic location (National Equality Panel [NEP], 2010: 1).

It has now been over a decade since, on the pages of this journal, Scully (2002) called for scrutinizing errors existing within meritocratic organizational systems, especially universities and within them schools of management/business. In her view, ‘if critical theorists in management schools are to speak compellingly about inequality in society, taking a more critical look at local inequalities is a good place to start’ (Scully, 2002: 6). Responding to this call we address the question of how meritocracy is, or is not, contested in business schools in the UK. We also ask what effects the contestation of meritocracy, and the absence thereof, have on power relations within the organizations and on the situation of individuals who, while potentially being disadvantaged by the processes of reproduction of inequalities, are the target of meritocratic policies. Empirically, we address the experiences of an increasing category of workers—women of non-UK origin employed within UK higher education—and their accounts of making sense of their career trajectories. We see the rise of this group of workers as an opportunity to problematize meritocratic premises, since the experiences of this group may provoke a new awareness of how inequality distorts opportunity structure in organizations. In adopting this empirical focus, we are making a contribution to diversity studies, inspired by Zanoni et al.’s (2010) call for organizational scholars to address issues related to workplace diversity as experienced by the workers, rather than focusing on top-level managers and policy makers.

Throughout the analysis, we approach meritocracy as a discourse which is invoked by our research participants when they speak about the system within which they construct their careers. Through studying discourses, we gain knowledge about the composition, reproduction and legitimization of power relations in organizations and society (Foucault, 1978, 1980; see also e.g. Gordon et al., 2009; Hardy and Phillips, 2004; Hardy and Thomas, 2013). In this context, studying meritocracy as a discourse constitutes a previously under-explored approach and another contribution of our research. Recently, Van den Brink and Benschop (2012), in their discussion of gender inequality and gender equality practices in relation to professorial appointments in Dutch universities, described meritocracy as a ‘hegemonic discourse’ used by appointment committee members to ‘veil the practice of inequality’ and the fact that the meritocratic policies are in reality ‘routinely ignored’ (2012: 81). However, the authors do not develop a more systematic analysis of meritocracy in discursive terms. In analysing the discursive processes manifest in the narratives of our participants, we seek to identify the way in which relations of power and inequalities become reproduced and legitimated (Augoustinos et al., 2005; Wetherell and Potter, 1992) in UK academia.

Our findings reveal that meritocracy is a dominant discourse in the narratives of foreign women academics. Where meritocracy is explicitly contested, this can lead either to a feeling of discouragement or the possibility of dissent. Both of these outcomes trigger (in)actions that might or might not result in the improvement of individuals’ situations, and/or the redistribution of power within the organization. Based on these findings, this article makes the following theoretical contributions. First, it de-essentializes the concept of meritocracy, showing how it is socially constructed and how extant power relations always imbue the definitions and application of meritocratic principles. Second, through this study of minority workers we demonstrate how meritocracy has become a paradigm for understanding the way organizations function. Moreover, the conceptual critiques that are available to contest the meritocratic system, such as intersectionality, are insufficient for the unsettling of its paradigmatic status. We therefore show that one of the possible consequences of contesting meritocracy by those who feel disadvantaged by the meritocratic system is, paradoxically, its perpetuation and even its further strengthening.

In the remaining parts of this article, we first offer an overview of the concept and the mainstream discourse of meritocracy with an emphasis on its place in academic staff recruitment and progression in UK higher education. We then outline a number of critiques that have been put forward in relation to meritocracy. We also explain why studying discourses is important for organizational scholars, and in particular, why it is relevant to our research, before moving on to the discussion of contestation, or the lack thereof, of meritocracy in the narratives of our research participants. Finally, we offer concluding remarks addressing the conceptual and empirical contributions of our study as well as its practical implications.

The mainstream discourse of meritocracy and the context of UK higher education

While often being traced back to Confucian principles and Plato’s notion of the ideal state, the concept of meritocracy saw more widespread use with the aforementioned publication of Young’s (1958) classic political satire The Rise of the Meritocracy, which illustrated the dangers of applying meritocratic principles within society. Historically, the emphasis on merit in Western societies emerged in the climate of rationalism propagated by the philosophy of Enlightenment and in response to the demands posed by the industrial revolution for competent individuals to be employed in the increasingly complex organizations. In modern societies, merit-based achievement was to enable the efficient allocation of occupational positions (Jackson, 2007).

Meritocratic systems, to quote Davis and Moore (1945: 242), convey ‘the best reward’ and ‘the highest rank’ to those positions which ‘(a) have the greatest importance for the society and (b) require the greatest training or talent’. A key element of the mainstream discourse of meritocracy, as Allen (2011) points out, is the positive way in which it frames the reproduction of inequalities, stemming from the notion that meritocracy generates a justly unequal distribution of rewards. Specifically, inequalities that arise are seen as underpinned by the societal values of fair and free competition and hard work coupled with equality of opportunities as enablers of progression through societal and organizational ranks. Meritocracy thus is presented as a desirable, transparent system facilitating social mobility.

The discourse of meritocracy which portrays it in positive terms has influenced public sector employment in the UK since the mid-19th century (Pellew, 1982). Higher education constitutes no exception in that it reflects broader societal meritocratic principles through implementing equal opportunities policies and procedures, that is, through ‘[importing] equity and social justice agendas from the wider society and, in common with other large organizations, looks at ways of improving its performance in these respects’ (Brennan and Naidoo, 2008: 287–288).

The presence of the notion of performance and its improvement within the mainstream discourse of meritocracy in organizations points to an important aspect of it, i.e. the criteria for measuring merit. As Jackson (2007: 368) explains, the concept of ‘merit’ is understood to denote both ‘those formal qualifications that an individual has achieved—outward demonstrations of inner capacities and skills’ as well as ‘a measure of the specific inner capacities of individuals’ (Jackson, 2007: 368). The application of meritocratic systems, then, relies on an agreement as to what constitutes merit and how to measure it.

At present, among those UK universities that consider themselves research intensive, generation of research outputs within ‘market-framed research competitions’ (Kim, 2009: 396) is seen as the major criterion of merit, measured through the Research Excellence Framework (REF)¹ evaluation system which stipulates the degree of meritoriousness of various types of outputs. The term ‘excellence’ is of importance here, since there is a close link between the idea of merit and that of excellence. As Van den Brink and Benschop (2011: 509) explain, ‘in a meritocracy, the label of excellence should be reserved for scholars of the greatest merit’. Hence, the rhetoric of research excellence and quality constitutes an inherent feature of the current discourse of meritocracy in UK academia. Other recognized areas of merit against which the performance of academics is measured include teaching, income generation, public engagement and the fulfilment of leadership and management roles within the organization.

Another important aspect of the discourse of meritocracy, which can be discerned both in relation to the more abstract discourse of a meritocratic social system and with reference to the specific UK academic context, is the centrality of the individual. Rather than a group or the whole system, it is the individual whose performance is judged. This judgement is supposed to take place according to the individual’s achievement in a particular area, and is to be independent of, for example, gender, class, age, nationality, race, ethnicity, sexuality or ableness (Deem, 2009). Overall, the discourse of meritocracy in UK higher education reflects the way in which the majority of academic literature and everyday discourse refer to meritocracy at the level of society: as an abstract, timeless ideal, resting on the principles of justice, objectivity, social cohesion, progress, fairness and transparency (Allen, 2011).

Critiques of the mainstream discourse of meritocracy

Despite its generally positive connotations and appraisal, the mainstream discourse of meritocracy has also attracted criticisms, partly due to the problematic conceptual issues associated with it, and partly as a result of empirical evidence that counters the promises contained within this discourse. Below, we outline the major points found in critiques of meritocracy. While it is necessary to be aware of the interconnections between these points—for example, there is a link between the individualistic and the gendered nature of meritocracy (see Bagilhole and Goode, 2001)—for the purposes of analytical clarity, we present them in several separate sub-sections.

Objectivist and absolutist view of merit

Amartya Sen (2000: 6) argues that ‘there is some elementary tension between (1) the inclination to see merit in fixed and absolute terms, and (2) the ultimately instrumental character of merit—its dependence on the concept of “the good” in the relevant society’. The instrumentality of the notion of merit as applied in practice leads to definitions of merit always being contextual and subjectively established (Goldthorpe, 1996). There is, in this sense, nothing intrinsically meritorious about possessing particular abilities. Rather, merit constitutes a dynamic, relative, socially constructed phenomenon (Tomei, 2003). As a consequence of viewing merit as socially constructed, the place of power in the appraisal of certain abilities as meritorious should be acknowledged. Therefore, the portrayal of merit within the mainstream discourse as objective and absolute is inaccurate, as is the absence within it of consideration of power in defining and rewarding merit—a second point of critique, on which we elaborate below.

Absence of consideration of power in defining and rewarding merit

What is also absent from the mainstream discourse of meritocracy—and what, by contrast, its critics highlight—is consideration of power within a meritocratic system. Constructions of merit, i.e. what abilities are seen as desirable and worthy of reward in a given context can be attributed to those in positions of power who determine what counts as merit based on their own interests and achievements (MacKinnon, 1987; McNamee and Miller, 2004). Indeed, the fact that particular individuals have come to occupy high positions can in itself be seen as resulting from particular constellations of power and interests. When viewed as rooted in notions of merit as defined by powerful elites, merit-based employment practices have been considered to discriminate against minority groups, hence not creating the equal opportunities that are hailed as generated by a meritocratic system (Roemer, 2000). While the mainstream discourse of meritocracy portrays merit as identity-blind, definitions of merit have been criticized as gendered (Burton, 1987; Riley, 2002; Webb, 1997), classed and racialized, and the very possibility and desirability of meritocracy have been questioned on the basis of it glossing over causes of inequality (McNamee and Miller, 2004). Below we present several more specific critiques pointing to the sources and consequences of unequal power relations within meritocratic systems.

Individualist focus of the assessment of merit

Problematic for the critics of meritocracy is the notion of individualism inherent in the discourse of meritocracy, whereby ‘your problems are all your fault … your privileges are all your own achievement’ (Brennan and Naidoo, 2008: 290). As Riley (2002) and Augoustinos et al. (2005) argue, this individualist flavour of meritocracy functions to make invisible the material benefits generated by a meritocratic system to the dominant group, thus contributing to perpetuation of the status quo. Whereas the assessment of academic merit takes place at the level of an individual, its achievement depends on belonging to and taking advantage of networks of academics. Access to senior mentorship and joint research project networks, however, is not equally distributed amongst all organizational members. For example, it is weaker in the case of women compared to men (Fletcher et al., 2007). Further, as Bagilhole and Goode (2001) demonstrate, male academics benefit in their careers from a patriarchal support system which manifests itself in homosocial relationships of mentoring, informal coaching and sponsoring, as well as provision of information, such as regarding institutional promotion procedures. Women academics, on the other hand, can sometimes experience the opposite of the validation and encouragement men are given—a phenomenon referred to as ‘the Matilda effect’ and denoting the systematic under-estimation and minimization of women’s competence (Rossiter, 1993). In this context, the critical voices regarding the supposed individualism of meritocratic systems is yet another point of critique of meritocracy, one which questions the assumed gender-blindness of meritocratic principles.

Lack of acknowledgement of the gendered character of ‘disembodied’ meritoriousness

In the workplace, the application of meritocracy as a system in which access and progression are open to all based on achievement can be examined conceptually through Acker’s (1990) well-known analysis of organizational hierarchies and jobs as inherently gendered processes. Here, the absence of the body from the discourse of organizational meritocracy is brought to the surface. Underpinned by the assumption that an individual is recruited for a job, and that the hierarchical progression of the job-holder occurs regardless of, for example, gender, class, race, nationality or ableness, organizational principles and procedures based on meritocracy frame workers as disembodied subjects, and jobs and hierarchies as abstract categories with no human bodies attached to them.

As Acker (1990: 149) argues, however, ‘an abstract job can exist, can be transformed into a concrete instance, only if there is a worker’. She points out that the closest representation of a worker fulfilling the abstract job ‘is the male worker whose life centres on his full-time, life-long job, while his wife or another woman takes care of his personal needs and his children’ (p. 149). By extension, organizational hierarchies are gendered as they are derived from existing structures of ‘gender typing and gender segregation of jobs and the clustering of women workers in the lowest and worse-paid jobs’ (p. 150). In this way, seemingly neutral merit-based measurement systems such as performance evaluations are underpinned by, and produce, gendered differences (Jonnergård et al., 2010).

For example, as Husu and Koskinen (2010) demonstrate in their analysis of broadly understood ‘technological research’ disciplines in a number of countries, including the UK, research conducted by women very rarely attracts scientific awards and prizes. The authors explain this phenomenon as possibly resulting from a judging process that is ‘heavily embedded with gendered assumptions [about] what counts as exceptional or outstanding’ (Husu and Koskinen, 2010: 137). Altogether, the achievement of merit as defined within UK higher education is less likely for women than for men (Currie et al., 2000; Knights and Richards, 2003). However, as discussed below, gender is not the only basis for inequality.

Lack of consideration of multiple ‘bases for inequality’

There exists a growing body of academic literature addressing the reproduction of inequalities in contemporary organizations through several ‘bases for inequality’ (Acker, 2006). Here, discussions take place within the area of ‘intersectionality research’. The academic discourse of intersectionality is characterized by those elements that are absent from the discourse of meritocracy in that it frames individuals as embodied human beings, entangled in power relations exactly because of processes associated with the multiple effects of, for example, gender, race, class, age or ableness.

The term ‘intersectionality’ was introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991) as a conceptual opposition to the flaws inherent in the premises of meritocracy, specifically to contest the assumed ‘colour-blindness, neutrality and objectivity’ (Nash, 2008: 1) of the legal system in relation to the employment experiences of black women, and violence against women of colour. Since its introduction, intersectionality has been developed and applied by scholars in a variety of ways to address the complexity and interconnectedness of identities and divisions within and between groups in contemporary society (e.g. Anthias, 1998, 2006; Crenshaw, 1991; Davis, 2008). Acker (2006: 443) defines intersectionality as the ‘mutual reproduction of class, gender and racial relations of inequality’.

Intersectional approaches assume that an analysis of social groups based solely on one category, for example gender, is insufficient for developing a nuanced understanding of the lived experience of disempowerment, marginalization and stereotyping. For example, in organizational contexts, reproduction of inequality involves processes associated both with gender and ethnicity, as demonstrated by Healy et al.’s (2011) study of black and minority ethnic (BME) women in the UK public sector. The very concept of intersectionality encompasses assumptions exactly opposite to those of meritocracy. In contrast to the discourse of meritocracy, which takes for granted the possibility of developing a social structure in which, for example, gender, race and class will be irrelevant for the location of an individual within this structure, intersectionality stresses the simultaneous effects of such categories, framing them as ‘interlocking systems of oppression’ (Collins, 1990: 225).

While the notion of merit assumes a disembodied subject, intersectionality brings embodied human experiences to the fore. In fact, Winker and Degele (2011: 54) see the body as one of four categories—along with class, gender and race—they identify as key ‘inequality-creating phenomena’ within social structures. Unlike the discourse of meritocracy, which disregards power relations underlying definitions of merit and shaping the outcomes of applying meritocratic principles, within the academic discourse of intersectionality individuals are portrayed as located within specific power structures and relations. Moreover, whereas the meritocracy is considered as serving to stabilize and normalize social and organizational inequalities and the processes of their reproduction (Allen, 2011), intersectionality—through the critical way it appraises the mechanisms and effects of power—provides discursive resources that open up the possibilities of emancipation and transformation (Dhamoon, 2011). Finally, unlike the individualistic emphasis of merit, intersectionality covers both the level of the individual and the collective (Hankivsky and Christoffersen, 2008).

As the discussion above shows, central to the mainstream discourse of meritocracy in general and in UK academia in particular are notions of social justice, transparency, equality of opportunities, fair and free competition, social progression, objective measurement criteria and individual achievement. What is absent from the discourse, as its critics point out, is the recognition of the context-dependency of the notion of merit functioning in a given system, the role of power in defining merit and the way it is measured, the place of the collective in the achievement of merit by an individual, as well as the effects produced by the multiple bases for inequality, such as gender, class, age, nationality, race and ableness.

Foreign women academics constitute a group of workers whose career access and progression are, at least potentially, affected by the negative outcomes of the multiple bases for organizational inequalities. Therefore, the above sub-sections discussing extant critiques of the mainstream discourse of meritocracy, especially the last two, should be of particular relevance to them. These critiques could possibly offer foreign women academics a way of making sense of their professional experiences and open up an avenue for challenging the underlying meritocratic principles and practices operating within the organizations they work for.

Importance of discourses for understanding power and inequalities in organizations

In order to understand how inequalities are reproduced and challenged in contemporary organizations, we adopt a Foucault-inspired view of discourse as ‘a structuring, constituting force, directly implying or tightly framing subjectivity, practice and meaning’ (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000: 1145). In doing so, we contribute to a body of work which explores the relationship between power and discourse in organizational contexts (e.g. Gordon et al., 2009; Hardy and Thomas, 2013; Knights and McCabe, 1999; Thomas et al., 2011).

Inequalities are manifestations of extant power relations, whereas power—as Foucault (1980) tells us—is produced and transmitted through discourse. Power and discourse are thus inextricably interwoven. Key to our discussion of meritocracy in UK higher education is Foucault’s (1978: 100) idea about discourse’s capacity to not only reinforce but also to unsettle extant power relations, since discourse can constitute both ‘an instrument and an effect of power’ as well as ‘a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy’. In this sense, while we consider the mainstream discourse of meritocracy to produce a particular type of reality, we also believe that an alternative, critical discourse could create a breakthrough and a possibility of change.

In relation to organizational settings, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) have pointed out that, through their identity-forming, -maintaining and -transforming effects, discourses constitute a powerful medium of organizational control. This is because employees tend to incorporate dominant discourses into their narratives of self-identity: come to identify with and position themselves in relation to the hegemonic discourses about work and organization, and exhibit commitment towards them. Discourse, then, has strong subjectivity-forming effects; discursively constituted subjects, in turn, produce discourses (Hardy and Thomas, 2013). Bearing the above in mind, we are interested in the reproduction and contestation of meritocracy in the narratives of foreign women academics.

Context of the study

The increased presence of women of non-UK origin in UK academia has been part of the relatively recent phenomenon of a growth in the proportion of non-national academic staff working at UK universities (HEFCE, 2010). This has been associated especially with the expansion in the number and size of business schools (ABS, 2009). As HEFCE (2010) statistics indicate, non-national academics employed at British HEIs accounted for 17% of the total academic population and 19% of academics employed in business studies-related fields in 2008/2009. At present, staff from European countries form the largest group among non-national academics, although the past three years have brought an intensive growth in staff numbers within a category which includes China, Japan and East Asia.

There exists a body of research addressing transnational academics (e.g. Kim, 2009, 2010; Smetherham et al., 2010) and gender within academia (e.g. Acker, 2008; Barry et al., 2006; Benschop and Brouns, 2003; Cress and Hart, 2009; Fox, 2010; Kantola, 2008; Knights and Richard, 2003; Monroe et al., 2008; Van de Brink and Benshop, 2011, 2012; Van den Brink et al., 2010; Winslow, 2010). However, beyond Czarniawska and Sevón’s (2008) analysis of the first women professors in European universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, little is known about the situation of foreign women academics. In our exploration of the experiences of this growing but hitherto under-researched category of workers we focus on how the discourse of meritocracy is drawn upon and contested in the narratives of foreign women academics making sense of their working lives trajectories. Within the contestation of meritocracy by our research participants we point to them mobilizing other discourses, which we identify as belonging to the language of critiques of meritocracy.

Methodology

We employ empirical data from 31 semi-structured interviews with foreign women academics in full time employment at 14 business schools across the UK. The reason behind the choice of business school staff was twofold. First, UK business schools have been at the forefront of changes that have affected higher education due to the broader trends of internationalization and globalization, and therefore they provide a particularly suitable setting for the study of how processes occurring at the level of society and transnationally have an impact on organizations, for example in relation to gender (Calás and Smircich, 2006) and other dimensions of inequality. Second, as business school academics, we had an a priori knowledge of the research context and first-hand experience of the complex ways in which inequalities are reproduced in this organizational setting. As Holvino (2010: 249, quoting Bannerji, 1992) argues, ‘there is no better point of entry into a critique or reflection than one’s own experience’. We therefore had a ‘sense of engaged subjectivity’ (Dhamoon, 2011: 239) and while we do not claim to have privileged access to the participants’ experiences, we believe that the existing commonalities allowed us to establish a degree of rapport.

Our focus on foreign women academics draws on the idea that certain individuals and groups in organizations can be potentially disadvantaged by existing structures (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). We did not enter the research setting with the assumption that our research participants would have experienced discrimination in their professional lives, but we were aware of evidence regarding the arising of disadvantage along the lines of ‘bases for inequality’ (Acker, 2006) such as gender, race and nationality. As we were interested in the experiences of a minority group in the context of internationalization of higher education, the focus on foreign women academics presented us with a rich reservoir of material. Wishing to ensure a high diversity of the sample and to bring out a variety of experiences of belonging to a minority within an organization, we applied the following criteria to the selection of our research participants: being female, non-UK born and a non-native English speaker.

We use the label ‘foreign woman’ as this was the most common descriptor mobilized by our participants in referring to themselves. They also tended to self-identify as ‘non-British’. Contrary to the way the literature on academic mobility refers to non-native staff, they rarely spoke about themselves as ‘international’ and never as ‘transnational’. As researchers, we do not apply the label ‘foreign woman’ in an essentialist sense. Rather, we consider it as an apt umbrella term to describe a relational, heterogeneous category of workers, for whom depending on the situation and the individual, career trajectories will be influenced by different factors, not always affecting exclusively foreign women. Sometimes this might be gender alone, on other occasions the fact of belonging to a particular nationality or religious group, on yet other the intersection of, for example, gender, ethnicity and accent. What our research participants have in common is the fact of belonging to an organizational minority which is growing in numbers as the drive towards internationalization and globalization continues in UK higher education.

As the principal method of data collection, we used narrative interviews since such an approach allows for analysing ‘the way people make sense of their relation to the world’ (Ludvig, 2006: 249) in narrating life experiences as shaped by themselves and others. Here, we draw on individual narratives, while also observing the broader structural conditions within which such accounts are produced. Interviewees were initially recruited through our personal contacts and ‘cold calling’ potential participants identified through university websites. The sample was subsequently built through a snowballing approach, while paying attention to including participants that differed in terms of ethnicity, nationality, race and career stage. The sample consists of interviewees from 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America representing all academic levels from lecturer to professor, spanning both research- and teaching-focused business schools (identified as R and T in the interview extracts). The composition of our sample largely represents the regional patterning of foreign faculty indicated earlier; for example, the majority of the participants were of European origin.

Ensuring the anonymity of the interviewees was crucial as a number of participants expressed concerns about the possibility of being identified should the combination of their age, nationality and position be explicitly stated. Therefore, all names that appear in the article are pseudonyms, and no references are made to specific institutions or nationalities. The interviews lasted between 46 minutes and two hours, were recorded and subsequently transcribed. They focused on the participants’ educational background and their professional experience in the UK. Starting from how and when the decision to enter the UK was made, the interviews then proceeded to trace the career trajectories of the participants. We asked them to talk about their experiences of teaching, research, administrative duties, the forging and maintaining of relationships with colleagues and students, participation in professional networks, and accomplished as well as anticipated career progression. We encouraged the interviewees to describe concrete events in order to get beyond generalities (see Van den Brink and Benschop, 2012). We also asked them about the gender proportions and hierarchical distribution in their workplaces, leading on to consider how they saw their own experiences and potential for progression.

We do not treat the data we collected as representing an ‘objective reality’ but as socially constructed in interaction with the interviewer (Essers, 2009; Van den Brink and Benschop, 2012). The fact that the researchers were also female, non-UK born business school academics and non-native English speakers contributed to the development of a rapport between the interviewer and interviewee, and therefore to the generation of narratives in an atmosphere of safety and frankness. At the same time, we are conscious that the interviewees might have chosen to present particular views or experiences in line with what they felt the interviewer expected. In selecting extracts for the purposes of the analysis, we sought to retain the spirit of the whole narrative from which a given extract was taken.

Interviews constitute one form of talk within which speakers draw on discourses to legitimate statements, actions and decisions; invoke or avoid social categories and establish accountability of self and others (Potter, 1996). In this article, our analysis focused on how the participants invoked elements of the discourse of meritocracy and its critiques when speaking about their experiences of working in UK academia. In this context, we view meritocracy as an identity-regulating discourse (Zanoni and Janssens, 2007) which can be discerned in the self-positioning by employees (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002), and also in the way that social actors ‘attempt to shape their identities and relations with others’ (Thomas and Hewitt, 2011: 1374). Addressing the narratives of those who are defined by particular discourses enabled us to explore their role in both reproducing and contesting them (Putnam and Cooren, 2004).

Working with the transcripts, we sought to locate elements of the meritocratic discourse as observable in statements (see McKenna, 2011). As previously outlined, the meritocratic discourse is characterized by notions of achievement, individualism and just rewards, for example. When analysing the interview narratives we started by thematically grouping the data according to 1) descriptions of career progression (from recruitment and appointment to possible promotion(s), 2) evaluations regarding the professional performance of oneself and colleagues (e.g. reviews and salary setting), 3) statements regarding professional success or failure of oneself or others and 4) statements regarding expected achievements, and any discrepancies in attaining them. This enabled us to see emerging themes which reflected the presence of a meritocratic discourse (cf. McKenna, 2011).

The themes were then further coded according to attributions of reasons for particular outcomes (e.g. luck, hard work, the possession of knowledge or skills, personal characteristics or contacts), and the resulting positive or negative evaluation by the speaker. This allowed us to observe linkages between expected and achieved performance and patterns of valuations of particular actions and outcomes, as well as deviations therefrom. In identifying the variety of discourses mobilized by our participants, we paid attention not only to the differences between individual narratives, but also to possible tensions, inconsistencies and contradictions found within each narrative. In this way, we were able to locate instances where an individual would simultaneously invoke competing and seemingly conflicting discourses.

The analysis also made it possible for us to consider the construction of power relations and the reproduction of domination. Underlying assumptions embedded in the talk, for example regarding individual agency and responsibility, and subscribing to notions of merit-based achievement, indicate how power operates through the meritocratic discourse: by constituting subjects that produce—or challenge—the meritocratic system.

Analysis and discussion

Our discussion identifies the presence of individualizing discourses that privilege personal agency and the principles of merit in foreign women academics’ accounts of their work experiences. However, the discourses mobilized by the participants also construct, for example, gender, nationality and race as potentially disadvantageous in the workplace, and offer articulation of arguments that challenge the ‘paradigm of individual achievement’ (West and Fenstermaker, 2002) which underpins meritocratic ideals.

The analysis is structured as follows. First, we outline how participants draw on a discourse of meritocracy to explain success and achievement. We then explore whether and in what way the belief in meritocracy is unsettled when confronted with experiences suggesting that a meritocratic system does not necessarily produce beneficial outcomes for all in an identity-blind manner. Finally, we discuss what happens when, rather than drawing on the discourse of meritocracy, individuals refer to the often intersecting processes associated, for example, with the simultaneous effects of gender and race, to make sense of their experiences within the UK academic system.

Narratives supportive of meritocracy

We start by considering examples from interviews where participants draw on the discourse of meritocracy in support of existing opportunities for progression. Here, we observe how references to meritocracy serve to construct individuals’ identities in positive terms, casting them as actual or potential achievers with good prospects of career progression. In such accounts, academia emerges as a meritocratic system in which qualifications and hard work determine the distribution of rewards in a just manner (Allen, 2011):

The advantages of academia: you really are assessed on the quality of your research, and it’s not nationality or gender or age-dependent … With my PhD I had already got good qualifications, so I had already got to the stage where, say, nationality discrimination did not matter. I believe that age, race, gender, these things can be very discriminatory at the low level of professional skills. Once you’ve broken this barrier, it becomes much easier to find jobs, but you have to be really highly qualified. (Diana, Lecturer, 45, R)

In the extract above, the discourse of meritocracy is exemplified, in the first place, by reference to the notion of quality, whereby quality is framed as a universal, objective criterion, defined and operating independently of, for example, gender, nationality or race of the individual. This allows Diana to build a positive image of her prospects of progression within academia through contrasting the principles guiding research quality assessment with potential discrimination stemming from processes associated with nationality, race, gender or age. Diana frames this kind of discrimination as only affecting workers with low qualifications, hence distancing herself from it. Moreover, qualifications—another element of the discourse of meritocracy mentioned by her—are presented as not dependent on gender, race, age or ableness. The meritocratic discourse thus appeals to Diana as it creates an advantage for her and identification with it mitigates the possible effects brought about by nationality, race, gender and age which she sees as a potential source of disadvantage for low-qualified workers.

Diana’s adoption of such paradigmatic view of meritocracy as the organizing principle of academia has a dual outcome for her situation. On the one hand, it motivates her belief and hope that if she fulfils the merit criteria stipulated by the organization, she will be able to progress. At the same time, however, it does not leave space for her to question her actual position within the lower echelons of organizational hierarchy and to ask whether extant promotion criteria adequately appreciate the contribution she makes to the workplace, for example in the view of her abundant industry experience she discusses elsewhere in the interview.

Diana’s example provides an illustration of the belief in the meritocratic principles being broadly held by those at the bottom of organizational power structures, even if they themselves have not yet progressed within the organization, and how this leaves these structures uncontested and intact. It confirms an observation made already over half a century ago by David Glass (1954: 25) based on his study of social mobility, that the belief in opportunity in itself brings about ‘greater social harmony’.

The discourse of meritocracy also tends to be drawn upon in discussing one’s achievements, thus allowing successful individuals to narrate their career progression and to position themselves in stable and positive terms within the organization. As Sealy (2010: 187) argues, ‘women often express strong commitment to the notion of meritocracy, particularly in relation to their own selection and promotion’. In the extract below, Petra frames her successful career in academia as a result of being assessed against criteria independent of, in this case, nationality or gender:

I think I have never been judged for being from abroad, or for being a woman. I think my CV has spoken for me, I think the fact that I have involved myself in university-wide committees, which in fact I was nominated to do, rather than putting myself forward. I’m not the kind of a person who will put herself forward for admin jobs, but when I’m nominated by the VC or the Dean or someone, in a position of authority, I will do my very best at the job. (Petra, Professor, 41, R)

Here, we find references to the underlying assumptions of the meritocracy discourse: the job itself becomes abstracted from the person who performs it (cf. Acker, 1990). In consequence, the fulfilment of professional duties results in the development of a CV that is considered as independent of the gender of the person behind it and of where she comes from—even if later on, we shall see how the embodied traits rendered invisible in the excerpt above are inserted into the account by Petra when describing her entry into the UK academic system.

Such conceptualization of a CV recurs in many of the interviews, whereby the CV emerges as a seemingly objective testimony of ‘outward demonstration’ (Jackson, 2007: 368) of the individual’s capabilities, and therefore provides a measure of merit. However, referring to the CV in this way does not account for its socially constructed character, and for the fact that some individuals might stand a greater chance than others to build a particular type of a CV, for example in terms of being able to demonstrate an uninterrupted career path as discussed by Knights and Richards (2003), or to produce research outputs enabled by access to networks of collaboration and mentorship (Bagilhole and Goode, 2001; Fletcher et al., 2007).

Throughout Petra’s account, and likewise, in other narratives, gender, race or nationality of those powerful members of the organization who determine the criteria of selection and promotion for particular positions within the organizational structure are not specified, in that they are only referred to in terms of their position in the hierarchy. In this way, the actual processes that have resulted in the appointment of particular individuals to high positions in the organization remain taken for granted, and extant power relations are not subject to scrutiny or critique.

Such accounts contribute to meritocracy remaining an uncontested system within which jobs are seen as carried out and objectively assessed by ‘disembodied’ individuals, even if, as Van den Brink and Benschop (2011: 12) tell us, in academia ‘standards of merit are constructed by powerful academics who stand to benefit from a construction that is presented as a precise, objective and univocal measure of excellence’ and that in reality, this ‘claim of neutral, objective and precise measurement does not hold’.

Some participants draw on the idea of equal opportunities and fairness of treatment, ensured within a meritocratic system (Brennan and Naidoo, 2008), for example as a shield against the possibility of suffering discrimination:

For the most part, I think there is actually space for you to grow and, sort of, equal opportunity, is the phrase I was thinking of. If you put in the hard work and you do the groundwork, there is no favouritism in making somebody else go before you … If you put in the hard work, then I think everybody’s got an equal chance to progress, so I’m quite comfortable with that idea. (Laila, Lecturer, 32, R)

In her narrative, Laila refers to hard work—an element of the meritocracy discourse—as a guarantor of non-discriminatory treatment. Hard work is an abstract, generic concept, through the use of which the practicalities of workload allocation are not contextualized: there is an implicit assumption that all academics are given the same chance to develop their position through effort and application, and that hard work will result, in each case, in favourable outcomes.

Here, again, meritocracy emerges as a paradigm for understanding the organization of academic work and the distribution of rewards, against the previously discussed idea that what exactly counts as valuable work and therefore the extent to which specific tasks are assigned merit depends on the interests of powerful actors (Tomei, 2003). Throughout Laila’s narrative, the qualitative and quantitative differences—such as those regarding the proportion of time allocated to teaching versus research—in workload levels between, for example, a junior lecturer and a professor are not mentioned. Similarly, the differences between the degrees of merit attributed to different types of work outputs, reflected, in the case of research-intensive institutions, in the privileged position given to research over teaching, are also unaddressed.

Laila, like many other participants, also draws on the individualist aspect of meritocracy: an individual’s responsibility for her own progression (Allen, 2011; Brennan and Naidoo, 2008). An emphasis on the role of the individual in shaping her own career outcomes glosses over the dependency of the achievement of academic merit on belonging to a network of support, which, as Bagilhole and Goode (2001) point out, is much more likely to be secured by men than women. Therefore, again, it leaves uncontested the power structures within which merit is defined, achieved and assessed. At the same time, for the specific individual, it creates space for feeling comfortable within the meritocratic structures of academia.

Contradicting the consistent application of meritocracy

We now move on to examine instances where the meritocratic discourse, represented by the abstract notions of ‘quality’, ‘research excellence’ and ‘hard work’ intertwines in the narratives of our participants with them referring to themselves as embodied workers, and bringing in the impact on their careers of, for example, gender, nationality, religion and race. In the first place, inserting the body into the meritocratic discourse makes visible the power structures underlying the definition and application of meritocratic principles:

My promotion prospects, I do strongly believe that, do depend on how good I am. But my situation at work, in terms of who thinks what of me and therefore what I get involved in, and what I get set aside from and that kind of thing, that would largely depend on how I’m able to be, to act in a way that is acknowledged to be the right way by the British … I do, sometimes, get irritated by being, sort of, singled out as different. But then, you never know whether it is the [nationality] thing, or is it the female thing, or … what is it exactly. (Magdalena, Lecturer, 39, R)

Magdalena, initially, draws on an abstract notion of being ‘good’ in professional terms, before pointing to the implications of the organizational power structures for her situation at work. First, she presents decisions about ‘getting involved’ or conversely being ‘set aside from’ activities as made by others rather than herself. She also admits that local norms of merit, i.e. what counts as ‘the right way’ of being and acting, are defined and applied by the British majority. Thus, she constrains her own agency and frames herself as the disempowered ‘other’ within the organization.

In speculating about the criteria underpinning these processes of ‘othering’, she points to two particular ‘bases for inequality’ (Acker, 2006) within the organizational hierarchy: nationality and gender. Magdalena indicates that when either of these two is applied, she becomes classified as ‘different’. She explicitly states that the holders of power in her organization are British, and by referring to her own ‘female-otherness’, she implies that they are also men. In contrast, then, to the previously discussed excerpt from Petra, in Magdalena’s narrative powerful members of the organization appear as embodied beings: British men.

Claiming that merit is defined and assessed by representatives of the dominant gender and nationality, however, does not automatically mean that the functioning of meritocracy itself is contested in terms of its outcomes. Rather than critically scrutinizing the implications of ‘who holds power’ for ‘who gets ahead and gets rewarded in universities, and who gets excluded’ (Scully, 2002: 6), for her own position and career prospects, Magdalena holds on to her belief that she can progress professionally as long as she is sufficiently ‘good’. Hence, even if the processes of assigning tasks considered as meritorious are perceived as dependent on judgements made by British men, career outcomes are still framed in the context of performance achieved due to an individual’s effort and talent. Regardless of the recognition of inequalities existing within the organizational hierarchy, the application of meritocracy remains unchallenged. This, again, points to the paradigmatic status of meritocracy as the model of thinking about the principles governing employment and career progression in higher education.

Consider also the way in which Patricia narrates her current situation as well as her intended ways of addressing it. While bringing in the simultaneous impact of gender, motherhood and religion as reasons behind her lack of merit in the area of academic publication, she does not question the power structures within which merit is defined and meritorious performance achieved in UK academia:

I will speak with you very frankly here … because I am a woman. Second, of course, I do have kids. My network is not that extensive. And plus mostly I am a covered woman, so just to find … this kind of co-operation, not every single one wants to co-operate with you, until they know you perfectly well, and this takes time … To be honest, to publish research these days with admin, with teaching, you need to collaborate with somebody. Every single paper you see published now, you see four, five names on it … But for myself, networking is not that easy for me … I will never ever approach somebody unless I feel that I am welcome. And doing research, what left me behind is that I am doing every single piece of paper on my own … But I will start to do some networking. (Patricia, Lecturer, 44, T)

In the extract above, Patricia conveys a sense of her inferiority and her weak position within the power structures of the environment in which she works. Through reference to being a mother and a hijab-wearing Muslim, she casts herself as a relatively unattractive research partner. As Healy et al. (2011: 11) demonstrate, for black and ethnic minority women, ‘any of their failures may be associated with their sex, race or ethnicity’. While Patricia points to the principle of particular types of jobs being linked to suitable bodies (Acker, 2006), she reproduces the discourse of meritocracy as currently defined within UK academia.

Patricia’s example confirms Allen’s (2011: 10) argument that nowadays, ‘the principles of meritocracy … became internalised’. In her narrative, gender and religion emerge as obstacles to the achievement of merit by an individual, but not in structural terms, only in reference to herself: it is still the individual who holds responsibility for meeting the criteria of merit, and the fact that the very way merit is defined and assessed puts certain categories of workers in an advantageous position while discriminating against others remains unquestioned. For example, Patricia does not critically appraise the fact that, as long as the respective authors are employed by different institutions, multiple-authored publications are on a par with single-authored publications as measured by the REF criteria.

Moreover, in presenting herself as the one who needs to ‘start to do some networking’, Patricia does not consider that for her, this might not be an easy task to accomplish since ‘personal contacts, friendships and cooperative work with key players in the field’ upon which, according to Bagilhole and Goode (2001: 167), academic success depends, are for women particularly difficult to develop, due to the predominantly masculinist, homosocial character of those networks (see also Fletcher et al., 2007). In line with the mainstream discourse of meritocracy, Patricia emphasizes her own duty to build her network of collaborators, even though she suspects others might not readily wish to collaborate with her.

Despite noticing that, in her own case, the functioning of the academic system is not identity-blind, she adopts an unquestioning stance towards the meritocratic premises and the progression rules of UK academia. She becomes a ‘colluded self’ (Casey, 1995, 1996): compliant and self-identifying with the goals and principles governing the organization. Her narrative, then, contributes to the undisrupted reproduction of organizational inequalities—here, along the lines of gender and religion.

The interplay of meritocracy and invocation of, for example, gender and nationality of the individual can, however, also lead to an effect of empowerment. Below we return to Petra who, in talking about the way she first entered UK academia, draws on the discourse of meritocracy while simultaneously referring to her particular position on the intersection of gender and region of origin, i.e. the fact of being a woman from Eastern Europe, in positive terms:

There were these people from [a global bank] who were visiting the College, and they were fairly high up in the hierarchy, and I was asked to have lunch with them, along with some other students. And they were starting a scholarship scheme for Eastern Europe, and it just kind of developed from there, where I did well in my exams, and somehow word got round that I was a good student, and then it kind of moved on … So somehow they saw me like a rising star, and I think that the College and the Dean, they all wanted some kind of … I was quite unusual, because you didn’t have many people from that part of the world. So I think it was good politics for them, to have a woman study management sponsored by [a global bank]. I sort of got it, really, just by doing well in exams and by creating a reputation of being academic, or being scholarly. (Petra, Professor, 41, R)

References to her position as a woman from Eastern Europe assessed favourably by British academics and representatives of a scholarship-granting organization, serve to explain Petra’s unique circumstances that, at the start of her career, created a source of advantage. However, while she explicitly mentions her gender and region of origin as important factors in enabling her to commence her career in the UK, she simultaneously draws on the discourse of academic merit as identity-blind. In framing her academic skills as independent of her gender and nationality, Petra is able to legitimize her entry into the UK academic system solely on the basis of merit.

Simultaneously, while positioning herself in relation to the organizational power structures as ‘unusual’, and being aware of the politics behind awarding scholarships, Petra narrates the effects of her ‘otherness’ as positive for the development of her career, at the same time, leaving extant power relations unquestioned. Similarly to Patricia’s, Petra’s story shows how, even where ‘the body’ is inserted into the abstract discourse of achievement through qualifications and hard work, this discourse does not necessarily become unsettled. This, again, points to the paradigmatic status of meritocracy in the narratives of our research participants.

Lack of belief in meritocracy

Sealy (2010: 187) contends that ‘whilst the ideology of meritocracy may be attractive, the reality of organizational life suggests it does not lead to appointments and responsibilities being based solely on talent and ability’. In the narratives we find examples of those realities not being framed as shaped based on merit. Below, two examples taken from the interview with Maya show how narrating one’s career without references to meritocracy but rather, as influenced by, for example, gender, nationality or religion, can have significant disempowering effects on individuals:

When I think sometimes about doing external examinership, which I haven’t done, I don’t try to apply …, because I feel if I go to another university and they see I’m female, I’m not British, I’m Muslim, a lot of things, I think people say, ‘Oh, how can this person be an external examiner for us?’. (Maya, Lecturer, 43, R)

Some PhD students from [her country of origin], when they come to the UK to study, they prefer to have a British supervisor, and they wouldn’t like you to be their supervisor. Some students coming from Arab countries, would not want you because you are female as well. So in addition to not being native British … you’re female … so you have like a double … negative effect, so they wouldn’t want that. I’ve started now looking at any applications from students coming from Arab countries, saying no. (Maya, Lecturer, 43, R)

Throughout Maya’s story, there is a strong emphasis on the—mostly negative—impact on her professional trajectory of gender, nationality and religion. Her lack of belief in the identity-blindness of meritocratic principles tends to influence the actual choices she makes in relation to getting involved in activities that contribute to the attainment of merit as currently defined in UK academia.

Rather than contesting or resisting the disadvantages brought about by the fact of being a non-British, Muslim woman, Maya avoids competing for roles which she sees as more suitable for British men. Through not applying for external examinerships or not supervising doctoral students from Arab countries, she contributes to reproducing the ‘inequality regimes’ (Acker, 2006) whereby certain merit-granting activities remain carried out mainly by the powerful majority. In this sense, the (in)actions resulting from her personal critical appraisal of meritocracy within UK academia contribute not to challenging, but to perpetuating extant power relations.

Two of the participants speak about how their lack of belief in meritocracy has resulted in deliberate resistance towards the structures of power within which academic merit is defined. The first of them is Zarah who declares that:

It’s not only that I’m not British, it’s also the fact that I’m a woman. I have a different appearance … Sometimes people can either be intrigued or fascinated, but sometimes they can feel threatened. So there is a mixture of things and sometimes it’s positive and sometimes it’s negative … The combination of gender plus national identity is definitely an explosive one. It has been a significant element in my career and it’s still an issue. (Zarah, Senior Lecturer, 35–39, R)

Here, while there is no indication of an unambiguously positive or negative outcome of the intersection of gender and nationality, emphasis is placed on the role of nationality, gender and appearance in shaping one’s career. Throughout her interview, Zarah presents her own situation as exceptional, and herself as being the ‘odd one out’ vis-à-vis the organizational norm of British male academics.

She also questions the way merit is defined in universities. In her case, the realization that, for example in the lecturing context, being ‘male, possibly oldish, possibly pretty tall, and with a posh voice’ constitutes the meritorious ‘norm’ has led to personal micro-emancipation. Throughout her narrative she talks about how she consciously rejected the pressure to conform to this organizational norm, liberating herself from the frustration about never being able to meet it. At the same time, it has become for her a source of strength and inspiration to support others in a similar situation to her, thus contributing to challenging and redistributing the power relations in her academic environment.

Another example of practices of resistance associated with the contestation of meritocratic principles and their application is provided by the narrative of Lisa who, first of all, stresses the precarity of her position as a foreign woman within the organization she works for:

Being a foreign woman, it’s a double jeopardy, that one … I do feel a double outsider to some extent because in the end, the fact is not going to change that it’s a male-dominated environment so as a woman that positions me right at the end of the power … But being a foreign person also puts me in a disadvantage even within the spectrum of women … So there is the case of me being not only part of a group that is organisationally oppressed but also being part of an oppressed group that within that is also disadvantaged. (Lisa, Lecturer, 42, R)

Lisa explicitly uses a vocabulary found in the academic discourse of intersectionality. In her narrative, terms such as ‘double jeopardy’, ‘disadvantage’ and ‘oppression’ serve to construct her location at the bottom of the power hierarchy within the organization and, in contrast to the mainstream discourse of meritocracy, to frame the distribution of rewards in her organization as unjustly unequal (see also Allen, 2011).

This self-identification in terms of disadvantage and oppression opens up, for her, two avenues of resistance. First, she states that she refuses to conform to the norms of behaviour she feels are expected of women academics since ‘based on my interests and personal preferences I won’t play that game which some women may’. Second, she speaks of how, in her research, she engages with academics in institutions from her region of origin, aims her work at journals published in her native language, and conducts her research in a non-mainstream area since ‘this is the subject I’m interested in, and this is the community of researchers I want to connect with’. However, she also expresses doubt about her promotion prospects within the current regime of definitions of merit because, as she sees it, the work she does ‘counts for nothing here’.

Both Zarah’s and Lisa’s strategies of resistance, if applied on a larger scale, might stand the chance to unsettle and contribute to redistributing the power structures of defining and applying merit in UK academia. We shall return to this point in the concluding remarks.

Concluding discussion

In this article, we have explored the contestation—and its absence—of meritocracy in business schools in the UK. We have also asked what effects the contestation of meritocracy, or the lack thereof, has on the situation of individuals and the power relations within the organizations. Empirically, we have focused on women of non-UK origin: a growing but still under-researched category of workers employed in UK academia. We now conclude by first discussing our contributions to knowledge before offering some practical implications of this study.

Contributions to knowledge

Our study contributes to the knowledge of how structures of inequality are being reproduced in contemporary organizations. In particular, it provides insights into the role of minority employees in reproducing and challenging the mainstream discourse of meritocracy in organizations. The work of other researchers has pointed out how the ‘ideology of meritocracy’, reflected in the language of official managerial rhetoric, ‘conceals practices of inequality that have nothing to do with merit’ (Van den Brink and Benschop, 2011: 518). The reproduction of hegemonic structures of inequality in academia through journal rankings, citation indices, senior appointment recruitment and selection processes, and peer review and grant application systems based on, for example, gender, race and class has also been documented by others (e.g. Adler and Harzing, 2009; Laudel, 2006; Nkomo, 2009; Özbilgin, 2009; Van Den Brink and Benschop, 2011). Through our analysis, we add to this body of work by focusing on the perpetuation of, and also challenge posed towards, the unequal power relations in academia by the way in which foreign women academics invoke the discourse of meritocracy and its critiques in making sense of their working lives trajectories.

Our findings resonate with Allen’s (2011) argument that contemporarily, the belief individuals have in meritocracy constitutes an important feature of a meritocratic system. Here, meritocracy emerges as a paradigm for making sense of the way academia is organized. To start with, this belief in the university as a meritocratic institution is widely shared as an internalized, taken-for-granted assumption by those of our research participants in the early stages of their careers who have not yet had first-hand experience of whether, indeed, academic progression takes place according to meritocratic principles.

Second, our analysis reveals that even where individuals have experienced either career advancement or discrimination due to reasons not associated with merit, this does not tend to disrupt the hegemony of the meritocratic discourse in their narratives and thus does not lead them to questioning the application of meritocratic rules. Moreover, meritocratic principles remain unquestioned also where individuals have observed and been affected by the definitions of merit as being produced by the dominant majority within the organization.

The generally uncritical reproduction of the discourse of meritocracy, as illustrated by our study, can be seen as a positive phenomenon in relation to its consequences for the way an individual feels about and acts in the workplace. Subscribing to the mainstream discourse of meritocracy leads individuals to becoming ‘colluded selves’ (Casey, 1995, 1996) and as such it opens up for them the opportunity to develop a proactive and optimistic approach to their career prospects and achievement. What needs to be noted, however, is that when meritocracy is invoked exclusively in positive terms, participants often construct themselves as ‘disembodied’ workers, operating within ‘disembodied’ organizations, and portray the academic environment as one in which hierarchies, jobs and organizational processes are not influenced by, for example, gender, race or nationality of those who work in and manage them (cf. Acker, 1990). Through this discursive ‘disembodiment’, foreign women academics do not address their own position vis-à-vis the male- and white British- normativity.

Further, even if the locus of power in UK universities is, sometimes explicitly and sometimes by implication, identified as residing with white British men, the paradigmatic status given to meritocracy still contributes to the perpetuation of extant power relations. In cases where individuals acknowledge that the systems of progression within their institutions are not gender- or nationality- blind, this does not necessarily become a reason for them to critique and challenge the principles and application of meritocracy or the power structures in their organizations. Instead, as the narratives demonstrate, they might see this as a basis for questioning their own chances of progression within the system, and react to it by, nevertheless, trying to adapt to its expectations. The paradigmatic position of the discourse of meritocracy is at present so strong that it renders extant critiques of meritocracy, both conceptual and empirically-based ones, insufficient for unsettling it.

How, then, is meritocracy contested and what outcomes does this bring about for the individuals and for the organizational power relations? As we have shown, those participants who narrate their careers without invoking the discourse of meritocracy, tend to mobilize a vocabulary that is absent from it, especially when they refer to their own position on the intersection of, for example, gender, nationality and religion. One direct effect of a discursive critique of and mistrust in meritocracy is self-exclusion from getting involved in merit-accruing activities. Ultimately, then, such critique poses little challenge to extant power structures. Considering what has been said previously about how the discourse of meritocracy is invoked, when looked at from the point of view of outcomes, both the affirmation and contestation of meritocracy can contribute to its reproduction.

Another route, however, can be that of deliberate, active resistance, manifest either in micro-practices in relation to one’s own work or through collective action aimed at redistribution of organizational power. We use these instances of resistance as an inspiration for reflections on the implications of our study.

Practical implications

While we consider meritocracy to be a better system than, for example, nepotism or arbitrary managerialism, we believe that the principles and application of meritocracy in universities should be contested, and space should be created for a more open use of critiques of meritocracy and for unsettling the currently dominant discourse. Conducting academic research along the lines of the present study constitutes a step towards revealing how powerful the discourse of meritocracy is in contemporary organizations, and why this is problematic from the perspective of the situation of groups such as foreign women academics. However, to counter the effects of the hegemony of the discourse of meritocracy on the reproduction of inequalities in organizations, research alone is insufficient. We see the need for definitions of merit as applied in UK academia to be scrutinized and modified, with an active participation of minority groups in these processes of redefinition. This, however, would require a radical change in the culture and approach to governance in universities—a change that can only be accomplished through a critical discussion, with the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders, of current governing principles.

Groups such as foreign women academics can play an important role in creating the climate for this change to be instigated. Against the individualizing tendencies of meritocratic systems, we call for collective action in the form of support groups and associations that would engage in mentoring and sharing experiences, in order to develop an awareness of organizational ‘bases for inequalities’ (Acker, 2006) and the mechanisms through which these inequalities are reproduced. Such associations could also act as spaces for propagating and raising the profile of practices which are currently not attributed a high degree of merit in academic institutions, such as conducting research and publishing work in outlets outside the context of highly ranked US- and UK-based journals. They would provide a forum for appraising and influencing the functioning of meritocracy at the level of particular institutions, and for challenging the definition and outcomes of the meritocratic principles as currently applied in UK academia.

Footnotes

Notes

Author biographies

Martyna Śliwa is a Reader at Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK. Her current research interests include migration and transnationalism, intersectional analyses of organizational identities, representations of organization in literary fiction and management and organizational history. Her writing has appeared in journals including Culture and Organization, ephemera, History Workshop Journal, Management and Organizational History and Organization and Urban Studies. She is a member of the editorial collective of the journal ephemera: theory and politics in organization. Address: Essex Business School, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. Email: masliwa@essex.ac.uk

Marjana Johansson is a Lecturer at Essex Business School, University of Essex. Her present research interests include aesthetic and experiential production and consumption, intersectional analyses of organizational identities and work in a Higher Education context. Her writing has appeared in journals including European Urban and Regional Studies, Urban Studies and Gender, Work and Organization. Address: Essex Business School, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. Email: mjohana@essex.ac.uk

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The discourse of meritocracy contested/reproduced: Foreign women academics in UK business schools

Abstract

Keywords

The mainstream discourse of meritocracy and the context of UK higher education

Critiques of the mainstream discourse of meritocracy

Objectivist and absolutist view of merit

Absence of consideration of power in defining and rewarding merit

Individualist focus of the assessment of merit

Lack of acknowledgement of the gendered character of ‘disembodied’ meritoriousness

Lack of consideration of multiple ‘bases for inequality’

Importance of discourses for understanding power and inequalities in organizations

Context of the study

Methodology

Analysis and discussion

Narratives supportive of meritocracy

Contradicting the consistent application of meritocracy

Lack of belief in meritocracy

Concluding discussion

Contributions to knowledge

Practical implications

Footnotes

Notes

Author biographies

References