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3 books match the query 'Merit (Ethics)'
Doing Meritocracy Right
How Business Leaders Can Turn an American Aspiration into Reality (and Why They Should)Thomas A. Cole
University of Chicago Press, 2025
As America’s most vaunted cultural value, meritocracy is celebrated by some as an institution and derided by others as a myth—or even a trap. Thomas A. Cole argues in Doing Meritocracy Right that if meritocracy is to persist as an institution—and it must—it requires structural support in the private sector. For America to achieve a version of meritocracy that more closely matches our aspirations, our business leaders must first offer equity of opportunity for individuals to demonstrate and develop their talents on equal terms.
Drawing on his decades of experience in advising CEOs and corporate boards, personally serving on the boards of major not-for-profits, and leading a large global law firm, Cole cites elite professional-service institutions—consultancies and law firms especially—as improbable laboratories for equity of opportunity. These workplaces, out of self-interest, are laser-focused on the quality of their professionals, seeking out talent and representation and then judging these individuals on (ideally) equal terms once they’re in place. Here, Cole sees an opportunity that no public initiative or platitudes can deliver: if workplaces seek out representational diversity by applying, with thought and care, a single standard of merit—one that emphasizes character—and by providing training and mentoring on an equitable basis, then they will offer a ladder to social and economic mobility that serves both individuals and society.
Cole argues that a meritocratic society is achieved in two interrelated stages: access to education; and post-education promotion to membership in the elite. The latter, he says, is the domain of business. Cole argues that the private sector is better positioned to effect reform and he encourages leaders in the private sector to pursue reform both in their organizations, in government, and in the universities and communities where they have influence.
Meritocracy in the private sector can’t control the many American inequities that exist on the ground of American society. But it can do social good by serving as a reliable, merit-determined path to the highest echelons of business and industry. Cole sets the stage for the discussion of reforms with a “brief history of our imperfect meritocracy,” and rounds out the book with a to-do list for business leaders.
The Diversity Bargain
And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite UniversitiesNatasha Warikoo
University of Chicago Press, 2016
What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference.
Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.
The Playing Fields of Eton
Equality and Excellence in Modern MeritocracyMika LaVaque-Manty
University of Michigan Press, 2009
"Beautifully written and brilliantly argued, The Playing Fields of Eton takes us on a three-century tour of modern mental and physical life. We visit gymnasiums and dueling fields, murderball courts and Olympic venues, and while immersed in thought-provoking stories of people wrestling with the twin pursuit of equality and excellence, we find ourselves learning what it might mean to be modern. With equal measures of erudition and gentle humor, Mika LaVaque-Manty convincingly refutes the view that egalitarian progress forecloses possibilities for human excellence."
---Elisabeth Ellis, Texas A&M University
"A very insightful and clearly written philosophical inquiry into the nature of sport."
---Marion Smiley, Brandeis University
"A marvelously original analysis of the tensions---and interdependence---between equality and excellence in modern political life. From eighteenth-century dueling to contemporary doping in sports, LaVaque-Manty illuminates the bodily life of democracy at play, and challenges us to think in new ways about the connections between achievement and autonomy. The Playing Fields of Eton is an important book that pushes liberal and democratic theory in fruitful new directions."
---Sharon Krause, Brown University
Can equality and excellence coexist? If we assert that no person stands above the rest, can we encourage and acknowledge athletic, artistic, and intellectual achievements? Perhaps equality should merely mean equality of opportunity. But then how can society reconcile inherent differences between men and women, the strong and the weak, the able-bodied and the disabled?
In The Playing Fields of Eton, Mika LaVaque-Manty addresses questions that have troubled philosophers, reformers, and thoughtful citizens for more than two centuries. Drawing upon examples from the eighteenth-century debate over dueling as a gentleman's prerogative to recent controversies over athletes' use of performance-enhancing drugs, LaVaque-Manty shows that societies have repeatedly redefined equality and excellence. One constant remains, however: sports provide an arena for working out tensions between these two ideals.
Just as in sports where athletes are sorted by age, sex, and professional status, in modern democratic society excellence has meaning only in the context of comparisons among individuals who are, theoretically, equals. LaVaque-Manty's argument will engage philosophers, and his inviting prose and use of familiar illustrations will welcome nonphilosophers to join the conversation.
Mika LaVaque-Manty is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan.