Multiple realities of meritocracy in business higher education

Under a meritocratic system, elites are selected and socialized to believe that they have earned their status and associated rewards rightfully, through a combination of their knowledge and effort in a purportedly just system. As such, practices of ranking, judging, selecting and anointing individuals have become commonplace across the workplace and in education. I examine the case of business higher education in particular, and one particular instance of its internationalization in seeking to improve our understanding of meritocracy. I study how meritocracy acts and is acted upon by the various human, non-human and non-corporeal actors that support it. Using the concepts of multiplicity and ontological politics from Mol(1999), I seek to understand the multiple realities of meritocracy in business higher education. I aim to show how one ontology (state of reality) of meritocracy is codependent on and coexistent with with another ontology of meritocracy, effectively creating multiple levels of meritocracy.