Meritocracy and Representation

A standard conception of meritocracy, reflected in state referenda and the many legal filings against university admissions policies, is that assignment rules should be blind to group identity and monotonic in measures of past accomplishment. We present theoretical arguments and a survey of empirical evidence challenging this view. Past accomplishment is often a garbled signal of multiple traits, some of which matter more for future performance than others. In such cases, group identity can be informative as a predictor of success, selection practices motivated by the maximization of performance can depart from monotonicity and group-blindness, and the representation of resource-disadvantaged groups will vary by the type of organization. This perspective helps explain some recent empirical findings regarding the efficiency effects of group-contingent selection, and moves us towards a conception of meritocracy more closely tied to organizational mission