Hierarchical merit systems turn peer cooperation into competition and block group action

Evidence

In a variant of the Spanish legal system in southern Italy, even workers on the line in Japan are in a hierarchy of ranks. These ranks are not functionally determined by tasks but determined only by some combination of merit and seniority. In such a system, individual opportunity does not depend on group success so much as on individual differentiation from the group. Hence ties within the group of workers on the line are overlaid by ties with those above that must often be more compelling to many workers than are ties with other workers in general. Indeed, many workers must develop relationships of trust with their superiors, with whom they have reciprocal relationships, while their relationships with nominal peers are competitive and perhaps even distrusting. Weakening ties among peers works against their succeeding in group action against their employers. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 499

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Hardin’s thesis about trust requiring observable constraints; the merit-based ranking system manufactures distrust among peers exactly as Luhmann’s monitoring collapse would predict. — connects to: Online communities reproduce status hierarchies that limit who can participate — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 173; Well-brokered cross-organizational coalitions coordinated large-scale resistance — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 577
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘On Sacrifice’ theme of how authority structures deliberately engineer division among subjects to consolidate power.