Chapter 5 examines the role of family relationships in employment within family-owned businesses, particularly the tension between kinship-based hiring practices and meritocratic standards. While familial hiring can be perceived as nepotism, the chapter challenges this reductive view by emphasizing that kinship preferences in family enterprises often reflect legitimate efforts to ensure business continuity and stability. It distinguishes between contexts where kinship preferences are appropriate and those where they undermine merit. The chapter also explores how family upbringing and long-term involvement can cultivate practical skills that align with business needs, suggesting that family ties do not necessarily preclude competence. Through the case study of Burns Dance Studio, the chapter demonstrates how the integration of family values into business operations can foster both entrepreneurial resilience and sustainable succession planning.

This chapter examines meritocracy as central to conceptions of ‘the people’ at the mid-century. It focuses on Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and Storm Jameson, figures closely linked to the Workers’ Educational Association, a network that stimulated thought on class and culture. Meritocracy bifurcated the early formations of cultural studies. For Williams, meritocracy and intelligence create cultural fragmentation to be resisted by the abolishment of the eleven plus, a manoeuvre that would facilitate a common culture as Williams advocated for working-class intellectual power. For Hoggart, who was tentative about the working-class intellect, the social mobility of those found mentally able in the scholarship examination created a degradation of traditional working-class culture, which the adult education movement evaded. Storm Jameson’s novel A Cup of Tea for Mr Thorgill (1957) embodies tensions surrounding communitarian ethics versus individual advancement and elite cultural standards versus cultural inclusion as it examines concerns shaping cultural studies at the mid-century.

The prototypical form of hybris in the Greek sources involved the self-assertion of the rich and powerful, which resulted in their disrespecting their subordinates in arrogating to themselves claims to respect they were not entitled to. This contribution looks at the flipside of this scenario, because hybris can also work in the opposite direction: from the bottom up. Hybris, that is, can also involve subordinates overstepping their position in the social hierarchy and arrogating to themselves prerogatives reserved for those higher up the social ladder. While denouncing the hybris of the powerful has egalitarian implications – it defends the right to equal respect (or at least to some respect) of those who are disrespected – denouncing the hybris of the downtrodden towards their superiors is a tool for maintaining and reproducing a social hierarchy by grounding it on an allegedly shared (yet heavily asymmetrical) recognition order.

Aristotle defines hybris as a way of mistreating (dishonouring) others. But he also emphasises its psychology, in ways that chime very well with the understanding of the concept in earlier literary sources. As well as indicating a failure to show other people the respect they deserve, hybris is a way of thinking too much of oneself. This affects one’s estimation of the role that luck plays in all human endeavour: the classic Aristotelian case is that of the rich, ‘lucky fools’ who think that their material good fortune is a sign that they excel in all respects; but ancient hybristai in general tend to develop the belief that they are invulnerable to the vagaries of fortune. In this way, hybris regularly entails a failure to deal adequately with risk. At the same time, it bears a relation to the myth of meritocracy, by which the fortunate convince themselves that their success is deserved.

After 1960, well-funded campaigns advanced individualism and reduced support for community-based progressive programs, including Great Society programs. The term “meritocracy” spread quickly, adopted by progressives and conservatives alike. Conservatives asserted that unions, poverty, and public institutions manifested unwillingness to “work hard.” They argued that democracy depended on “free enterprise,” which they imagined could solve all problems. Economic and cultural turbulence energized organizations such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Ronald Reagan, George Gilder, Milton Friedman, and others flourished selling individualism. Their accusations of self-made failure shamed anyone who struggled against social or cultural circumstances, racial or gender inequalities, the results of globalization, or inadequate access to education and other opportunities. Presidents Reagan and Clinton both rejected the welfare state and demanded “personal responsibility,” an updated term for self-making. A constant refrain that taxes punish success also drew on the myth and painted the recipients of progressive programs as freeloaders.

This chapter places Bloomsbury at the center of the story of meritocracy in twentieth-century Britain by considering four figures: H. A. L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education in Lloyd George’s wartime cabinet and Virginia Woolf’s cousin; educationalist Bertrand Russell; Virginia Woolf, who critiqued meritocratic systems in Three Guineas (1938); and Angelica Garnett, who examined meritocracy in Deceived with Kindness (1984). The chapter argues that Fisher was the architect of a vision of technocratic meritocracy that sought to overcome competition through the promise of a flexible educational system that could meet the needs of every child. Russell and Woolf were critics of the mindscape of meritocracy. Both associated competitive educational systems with militarism, while Woolf harnessed her pacifist critique of meritocracy to feminist ends. Angelica Garnett explores the affective aspects of meritocracy’s ethic of individual effort, competition, and reward. As Garnett’s memoir suggests, exclusion from the meritocratic journey was as defining an experience as inclusion in its rites and rituals.

In this chapter, I take the theoretical predictions developed earlier to a near-global dataset using techniques of statistical inference. The analyses relate variation in country-year bureaucratic selection to two genres of outcomes: (1) a measure of representational inequality and (2) the incidence of internal conflict. I establish two core findings in this chapter. First, I show that countries in which civil servants are recruited more meritocratically are also those with higher measures of bureaucratic between-group inequality. Second, looking at the incidence of internal conflict in a given country-year observation, in a sample of post-colonial countries over the period 1941–2021, I find that internal conflict is more likely in countries that recruit civil servants meritocratically.

This chapter shows that the simple fact of failure on the civil service examination in Indonesia decreased applicants’ belief in the legitimacy of the process and levels of national identification while increasing support for in-group preferentialism. Next, I find that applicants who were offered – and accepted – employment in the civil service reported higher satisfaction with the process, greater amity toward out-groups, and higher national identification. I also present results from a series of survey experiments that suggest that Indonesian citizens respond negatively to information about representational imbalances in their local bureaucracies.

Chapter 7 examines the belief by some that affirmative action amounts to reverse racism and reverse sexism. The distinction between affirmative action and equal opportunity is described, as is the common belief that affirmative action involves quotas (quotas are illegal). Practices that undermine meritocracy in both college admissions and in employment are explored. These practices include legacy admissions, donors, and, in the context of employment, biases in job selection. Chapter 7 makes the case for the need of affirmative action because subtle forms of bias infiltrate all aspects of employment. The chapter critically examines the argument that diversity benefits organizations. The chapter ends with a discussion of goal-oriented versus process-oriented affirmative action plans, and other strategies to reduce bias in admissions and employment.

This chapter shows the essay’s troubled evolution as an academic genre in the nineteenth century, from the norms of classical rhetoric taught in English schools to the professionalising educational practices of Scottish universities and their American counterparts. Aimed to introduce meritocracy to Oxford and Cambridge’s class preferment system, the rise of essay-based public examinations in the 1850s reshaped the academic essay to sustain an informational mastery of the complexities of British imperial rule. Professors of English reacted to the new public-exam essay regime with one of two tactics. One was to strip the essay down to a managerial model that came to be known as the five-paragraph essay, shorn of classical figurality and stressing correct usage. Meanwhile, advocates of liberal education revived the teaching of the literary essay based on Victorian models, setting up a lengthy dispute in the twentieth century between literary and social-scientific protocols of essay writing.

Positive and negative aspects of meritocracy are evaluated, together with the difficulties of realizing it in practice. The notion and the theory of networks are recalled. White (fully legal, socially useful), gray (legal, but morally doubtful) and black (illegal) networks are distinguished. Various examples of networks are considered: the family, associations (cultural, religious, political, sports etc.), mason lodges (among the grey networks) including a deviant secret lodge as the P2 in Italy (the nature of which is illustrated), criminal clans and mafia-type associations (a synthetic history of the mafia is provided).

The chapter deals with three distinct yet interrelated public administration issues in the context of Bangladesh: patronage, civil service politicization, and the ordeals of politicization on individual civil servants. The patronage and politicization are deep-rooted in the governance and political trajectory of the country. Most key actors, politicians, bureaucracy, and business elites, are the beneficiaries of this politicized and patronage system. This chapter argues that the account of professional civil servants ordeal can contribute to the existing literature on public administration. The most perturbing issue is that the current governance trajectory in Bangladesh seeks to continually benefit from this politicized bureaucracy by establishing a monopoly over it. Therefore, it does not seem that the situation will change soon. However, as we know, nothing can stay static; thus, the silver line may emerge from the dialogues between stakeholders who want to see improved governance and professionalism in the bureaucracy. The author of this paper looks to the conscientious politicians, public opinion builders, and professional civil servants to break this vicious cycle.

Singapore’s civil service has been lauded as one of the successful case studies globally. The emphasis on meritocracy has been the hallmark of Singapore’s governance. This principle remains a guiding philosophy for the dominant People’s Action Party (PAP). Political analysts often attributed “the Singapore miracle” to its corruption-free, highly professional, technocratic government. Still, certain segments of Singapore’s civil service bear the institutional and cultural vestiges of politically motivated appointments. In this chapter, we first analyze the process of selecting top public service positions, showing how political considerations are factored into these appointments. Second, using the case of the People’s Association, we explore the “public service” face of para-political organizations and demonstrate how appointments and politics of urban governance are intertwined. The chapter offers us insights on how political interests and concerns persist despite the progress in public governance, and on the role of elite networks and political regime-making in shaping public sector opportunities.