“Gender, Race, and Meritocracy in Organizational Careers” by Emilio Castilla is a report done in 2008 at MIT to explore the literature on merit-based reward systems. Castilla uses huge amounts of data that “empirically establishes the existence of this bias and shows that gender, race, and nationality differences continue to affect salary growth” (1480). He finds that although merit-based reward systems are used to ensure equality and transparency, they actually do the opposite.
Some background:
I’ve talked about meritocracies before on the NYMG. Bloggers, techies, and (unfortunately) people in powerful positions often believe that hiring and promotion in the tech industry is a meritocracy: that people are simply hired, promoted, fired, and so on based solely on merit. The idea that you just need to learn how to program better or code better or whatever to get respect is the dominant is narrative. As I have quoted before: Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich (Michael Arrington). Castilla’s research proves that not only is this completely false, but that this sentiment makes the discrimination worse.
Castilla writes, “the formalization of performance management systems can introduce organizational processes and routines that make it possible for bias and discriminatory judgments to occur at several stages” (1485). However, his ultimate conclusion isn’t that the merit system itself is the problem. Rather, it is a lack of accountability and transparency that comes with most merit-based systems.
For example, let’s say you work for a company that requires you to do X, Y, and Z. You do those and get satisfactory marks on your performance reviews. In order to be promoted, you must do A, B, and C. This means that anyone who accomplishes those tasks (which theoretically would have tangible outcomes) would get a promotion. Most school systems use a strategy similar to this, as teacher’s salary and rank often are related to their education level: get a Master’s degree, get a 10% raise. However, these systems allow for very little emphasis on things that can’t be empirically proven or have tangible outcomes. Being a “good” or creative programmer or design artist can be very subjective and hard to define.
So in this tech company, they decide to use a merit-based system. What this means is that certain people (let’s say a manager and an HR rep) determine who gets a promotion. Promotion strategies here would likely rely on performance reviews, reputation, attitude, effectiveness, and fulfillment of other criteria. However, these criteria often measure subjective things, unlike the educational level described above. Again, there is nothing inherently evil about this system. So why do tech-related company consistently under hire and promote women and minorities (a measured fact)?
The measurement criteria used to evaluate employees have been made in an environment that is already biased against women and minorities. They reflect a desire to have people “like yourself” around you. Again, there is nothing evil about this. You of course want people like you around, people that speak your language. But the tech industry is so dominated by one particular demographic, that this attitude can only lead to less diversity. Sure you measure women and minority against the same criteria you measure white men against, but the criteria were made by white men and reflect attributes and values found in white men.
It’s like saying I have decided that what is important about a blogger is that they are able to talk about what it was like growing up in the US with video games. This already discludes international bloggers, those who, socioeconomically, were not able to afford video games in their childhood, and anyone who grew up prior to the 80s. So in this way, to be fair, I would need to open up my criteria. As games are more universal (as opposed to video games), I could rely on a broader definition of games. Rather than requiring someone who grew up with games, I could ask for someone who has experience with games educationally or in a setting that encompasses a varied age range. There are many ways I could redefine my criteria to be more inclusive but still specific enough to get what I need.
In the industry, requiring 10 years of experience is common. However, 10 years ago, less than a handful of women worked in programming positions in the game industry. This criteria is applied to all who apply (not just women) but is already biased against women. This is why merit-based systems currently serve to discriminate against women and minorities. Though it doesn’t have to be this way.
Gender, Race, and Meritocracy (Castilla AJS May 2008)
So anyway, I have attached Castilla’s article to this blog. I would be interested to see if anyone has other interpretations of it, or of this issue in general.
