Meritocracy and the labour market

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Sociology of Industrial Societies

• Meritocracy and the labour market

Week 4 MT07
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• Meritocracy and the labour market
• First, a quick recap
• 0. Social mobility where meritocracy fits in
• Then, four questions
• What do we mean by meritocracy?
• Why expect industrial societies to be
  meritocratic societies?
• How meritocratic are industrial societies today?
• Are industrial societies becoming more
  meritocratic over time?

• Meritocracy and the labour market

Week 4 MT07
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• Social mobility where meritocracy fits in
• Industrial societies are socially mobile
  societies insofar as
• high absolute rates
• surplus of ? over ? mobility
• However, social fluidity
• is lower than we might
• expect
• absolute rates substantially
• due to structural mobility
• little equalization of
• relative mobility chances
• much intergenerational
• immobility, particularly at
• the extremes of the class
• structure

• Meritocracy and the labour market

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• What do we mean by meritocracy?
• Literally rule by those with the most merit
• Generally agreed to be a system in which
  occupational roles are allocated on the basis of
  achieved rather than ascribed attributes
• But different ways of operationalizing the
  concept
• Could mean possession of specialized
  skills/technical competences
• Often more broadly conceptualized as
  intelligence and effort combined
• Most often measured in terms of educational
  qualifications
• Growing meritocracies, then, should display
• a strong/strengthening E ?D link
• therefore, a weak(ening) O?D link
• Plus
• a weak(ening) O?E link,

Education
Origin
Destination
Increased Merit Selection hypothesis

• Meritocracy and the labour market

Week 4 MT07
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• Why expect industrial societies to be
  meritocracies?
• The logic of industrialism again (e.g. Kerr et al
  1959)
• Structural change means continual upgrading
• of the occupational class structure
• Processual change means shift from ascription
• to achievement as the basis for selection to
• occupational and social roles
• Compositional effect means fastest growing
• occupations are those in top classes where
• achievement-selection is strongest
• Functionalist theory (e.g. Davis and Moore 1947)
• Industrial societies require that that most
  functionally important occupational roles are
  filled by the best people
• Unequal rewards structure functions to motivate
  competition for high-level performance in most
  functionally important roles
• Education system functions to match individuals
  to jobs

• Meritocracy and the labour market

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• How meritocratic are industrial societies today?
• Common approach is to use loglinear models to
  test hypotheses about the associations between
  origins (O), education (E) and destinations (D)
• O E D all three are independent of one
  another
• O ED E affects D, but E and D are independent
  of O
• OE ED O affects E and E affects D, but D is
  independent of O
• OE ED OD O affects E and E affects D and O
  affects D
• Clear ED association adding ED term reduces
  misclassification from 26 to 14
• But also clear associations between OE and OD
  adding both these terms reduces misclassification
  to under 2

Source Marshall, Swift and Roberts 1997

• Meritocracy and the labour market

Week 4 MT07
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• How meritocratic are industrial societies today?
• Those with higher qualifications have higher
  probabilities of class I/II destinations

Probabilities of entering the salariat (classes I
and II) given class origin and education
Source Goldthorpe and Jackson

• Meritocracy and the labour market

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• How meritocratic are industrial societies today?
• Among those with high measured ability, a
  striking class origin gradient in the
  distribution of class destinations

Source Savage and Egerton 1997

• Meritocracy and the labour market

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• How meritocratic are industrial societies today?
• Merit characteristics (qualifications,
  technical skills, etc.) often required
• by employers, esp. for jobs in higher
  classes

of job ads containing at least one requirement
for a merit or non-merit characteristic
Source Jackson 2007

• Meritocracy and the labour market

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• Have industrial societies become more
  meritocratic over time?
• Contrary to the predictions of the IMS
  hypothesis, the impact of education on class
  destination has weakened over time

Source Goldthorpe 2003

• Meritocracy and the labour market

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• Have industrial societies become more
  meritocratic over time?
• Why has the ED association weakened over time?
  Sociologists not yet certain, but several
  possibilities...
• Educational expansion may have outpaced the
  upgrading of the
• occupational structure e.g. more graduates,
  not enough graduate jobs
• 2. As possession of qualifications becomes the
  norm, possible decline in the value of
  qualifications as signals to employers of merit
• Employers may still select on merit/education,
  but may also increasingly select on selection on
  non-merit attributes
• But note that a weakening of the ED association
  doesnt automatically mean a weakening of the
  significance of educational qualifications for
  class destination rather, qualifications may be
  becoming a must, but not a guarantee, of access
  to the higher occupational classes

• Meritocracy and the labour market

Week 4 MT07
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• Conclusions
• Merit, as measured by education, matters for
  occupational class
• destination, but not nearly as much as you
  might think
• However, the O?D association is mediated by
  merit-selection(A) origins
• have less of an impact on destinations among
  the more highly educated
• But the importance of merit for class
  destination depends on class origin (B)
• those with low class origins have to
  display rather more merit than those with
• high class origins to have the same chance
  of ending up at the top

Education
?
B
A
Origin
Destination

• Meritocracy and the labour market

Week 3 MT07