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Journal of Business Ethics

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11.05.2021 | Original Paper

In the Name of Merit: Ethical Violence and Inequality at a Business School

verfasst von: Devi Vijay, Vivek G. Nair

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 2/2022

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Abstract

This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence.

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Our data collection had largely concluded by 2019 when IIMs implemented the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) reservation (10%). Thus, this study does not include EWS students. EWS inclusion complicates the binary of upper caste as general (merit) and oppressed castes as reserved (non-merit) and warrants further research.

IIM entrance exams introduced Third Gender as a category in 2019. Prior to this, candidates identified as male or female.

In some regions in India, some OBC groups compete with upper castes for economic and political dominance. Nevertheless, in the context of higher education, the general category’s claim on merit is entrenched. Dominant discourses relegate a student claiming a reservation to the shadow of ‘non-merit’ (Deshpande, 2013).

Beedis are South Asian cigarettes made of tobacco wrapped in tendu leaves.

State universities give domicile preferences; central institutions like IIMs, IITs and NITs do not.

Lakh is a unit in the Indian numbering system, equalling 100,000.

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Titel: In the Name of Merit: Ethical Violence and Inequality at a Business School
verfasst von: Devi Vijay
Vivek G. Nair
Publikationsdatum: 11.05.2021
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 2/2022
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04824-1

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