Diversity and the Evaluation of Talent in the Accounting Profession: The Enigma of Merit
基于对英国中大型专业服务公司的访谈，探讨了“功绩”的语言和实践如何阻碍多样性提升，指出功绩的技术性和文化性两方面导致精英群体持续受益，从而解释了多样性改善努力效果不佳的原因。
SYNOPSIS While accounting firms are facing recruitment and retention problems, regulatory bodies are calling for efforts to improve diversity to be more effective, especially at senior levels. In this paper, we discuss “merit” and assumptions about “meritocracy” in processes of performance evaluation and career progression. Based on interviews in medium and large professional services firms in the United Kingdom, we explore how the language/practices of merit can inhibit moves to improving diversity. Merit has two aspects: “technical” notions of core competencies associated with merit and cultural notions of social fit, which have the effect of favoring the progression of the elite groups embedded within firms. The latter creates a loop in understanding merit, enacted within firm culture over time, that is difficult to disrupt. As such, efforts to improve diversity are unlikely to bring about change without considering how organizational beliefs about merit have unintended consequences.