The Myth of Bureaucratic Neutrality: Institutionalized Inequity in Local Government Hiring

Defining Merit

In American public administration, the belief that hiring decisions are to be made solely on the qualifications of the individual is a bedrock principle for scholars and practitioners alike. This practice, often referred to as the merit system or merit-based hiring, allows us to believe that at the end of the process, the most qualified candidate will receive the job (Light, 2006). Many would agree that the pursuit of merit-based hiring is a noble goal. However, historically, there have been problems with regard to implementation because it is not clear what is meant when we say that we should hire the best candidate. As a result, it can be incredibly difficult for public organizations to implement this important principle. The definition of merit is complex and at times interlocking (Anderson, 2013). It is used to convey virtue, deservingness, rationality, and expertise. In terms of virtue, merit means that the individual is worthy of praise. However, merit can also mean that one is deserving of help, or a proverbial leg up. Finally, and most relevant to the neutrality school of human resources, is merit as ability or technical skill. In this article, we address these different conceptions of merit and examine how the implementation of merit has allowed merit-based hiring to become a rationalized myth in local government hiring. The field must examine merit to ensure its efficacy and understand the potential harm the rationalized myth of merit may play in public employment.

In principle, we would like to believe that the human resource application of merit is exclusively, or at best largely, focused on ability. However, an argument can be made that the other definitions remain in play, even when decisions are being made based on ability. For instance, the idea men have to support a family, and women do not, frames the decision to hire or promote as “who is more deserving” as opposed to “who is more qualified.” Similarly, hiring someone from the same geographic region or neighborhood, because they “fit” into the culture of an organization emphasizes goals of harmony in culture rather than “who is most qualified” for a particular position within the organization. Because the human resource application of merit often expands beyond ability, it is essential the field recognizes these various applications and seeks to understand their implications on the public sector.

This continues to be a vexing problem for modern local governments. In particular, organizations that rely on testing, such as written tests for promotion from patrol officer to sergeant in police departments, to determine the acceptability and ranking of candidates for positions and promotions must confront this problem to be an equitable modern employer. This is a problem that has resulted in significant attention and litigation for local governments (Riccucci & Saldivar, 2012). For example, in January of 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the New Jersey Civil Service Commission and the State of New Jersey. The suit alleged that the written examination used for promotion to the rank of police sergeant in a number of local jurisdictions discriminated against African Americans and Hispanics.

According to the press release,

The United States’ complaint alleges that African-American and Hispanic candidates for promotion to sergeant pass the examination at significantly lower rates than white candidates. The complaint also alleges that even those African-American and Hispanic candidates who pass the examination suffer discrimination because their passing examination scores are significantly lower than those of white candidates, and New Jersey certifies candidates for promotion to police sergeant in descending rank-order based primarily upon each candidate’s written score. (U.S. Department of Justice, 2010)

Written examinations have long been a popular way of identifying qualified applicants for local government positions (Riccucci & Riccardelli, 2015; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). As the passage above indicates, even with an examination, there can be different ways of interpreting the results. In general, there is a numerical cut off score, and those candidates who score above that line can be selected for open positions or promotion. From there, the selection process can happen in one of the two ways. One method is to select the candidates with the highest scores. Another, often described as “the rule of three,” narrows the list of potential candidates down to the three people with the highest scores. From there managers are allowed to pick any one of the three candidates in that pool (Ban, 1998). In public personnel management, there is an inherent logic in each approach. For the former, if everyone is given the same test, those with higher scores can be considered “more qualified” than those with lower scores. However, those who prefer the latter approach argue that the examinations actually reflect a minimum level of competence, and that there are other factors that should be considered when determining merit. By being able to select anyone above the threshold, managers are given greater discretion over the selection of their employees.

Still, even when the process seems straightforward, it often is not. The issue raised in the Department of Justice complaint is not simply a disagreement over which selection method to use. Instead, it reveals a larger historic problem. The definition of merit, and the selection process of employees, has long been used as a tool to exclude racial and ethnic minorities. Testing has been at the core of this controversy in the United States for the last century (Riccucci & Riccardelli, 2015; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983), with much of the debate centered on the validity of the exams, particularly its ability to predict future performance (Henson, Reyns, Klahm, & Frank, 2010). In the case presented above, the Department of Justice charged that

New Jersey’s use of the examination violates Title VII because the state has not determined that its pass/fail use of the police sergeant written examination, or its certification of candidates in descending rank-order to local jurisdictions is job related and consistent with business necessity. (U.S. Department of Justice, 2010)

The Department of Justice references Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which established the need for testing to be related to job functions, rather than a means to discriminate.

In short, despite the perceived neutrality of the examination, it is not at all clear that the selection process, or the exam itself, would result in the selection of the best police officer. Instead, according to the charge, what the examination did was produce a pool of candidates that is disproportionately White, while providing the decision-makers cover under the guise that the selection process is both neutral and legitimate. Ultimately, the case settled with a consent decree eliminating the written exam and requiring 10 jurisdictions in the state to seek prior approval from the Department of Justice to make changes in hiring and promotion decisions to ensure processes are related to job functions. Moving forward, local jurisdictions and the state must demonstrate that required qualifications and testing are related to job functions and potential success in the position.

Although this may seem like a straightforward response to a basic mismatch problem between testing for merit and job functions, there was significant political fallout in local jurisdictions at the time, and the current federal administration has gone a step further stating they will actively pull back on monitoring local police departments (Lichtblau, 2017). There is a strongly entrenched belief that testing is neutral and results in the best, most meritorious candidate being selected, even when it is revealed that testing outcomes are unrelated to job performance outcomes. Local jurisdictions in New Jersey were, and are, not alone in their reliance on ideas of neutral merit hiring processes. Merit-based hiring is widely used throughout the field.

In this article, we argue merit-based hiring is often a rationalized myth in local government hiring (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Although the use of merit-based hiring is widespread, the rationale for the practice is often disconnected from the purpose within local governments. The practice becomes so widespread that it is taken for granted, and people begin to overlook the reasoning behind it. Rationalized myths go beyond hiring practices and ideas of merit within local governments, but merit-based hiring in local governments represents one of the most entrenched ways that ideas of bureaucratic neutrality continue to permeate modern public organizations. We use an institutionalism framework to discuss the myth of bureaucratic neutrality and ways in which the field has used it to develop a reliance on ill-defined concepts of merit and merit-based hiring systems that institutionalize inequality in local government hiring.

We first present a discussion of institutionalism as a framework and then trace the historical discussion of civil service reform through modern legal discussions of merit in local government hiring. Although a comprehensive review of the legal evaluation of merit-based hiring, and written testing in hiring, is beyond the scope of this article, we provide a foundational overview that highlights how courts have been complicit in connecting and institutionalizing ideas of written testing and neutral merit. Ultimately, we argue that perceived bureaucratic neutrality of merit-based hiring at the local level continues to permeate public administration practice and scholarship with profound implications for discussions of equity and social justice.

The Role of Rationalized Myths in Organizations and Public Administration

Like public administration more broadly, institutionalism is interdisciplinary in nature, with threads of scholarship developing from economics, political science, history, and sociology. In the political science and sociology traditions, institutionalism provides insight into how individuals use institutions to make sense of goals, priorities, decision-making in complex situations (March & Olsen, 1989). Broadly understood, institutions are established norms and are embodied in particular organizations or systems (Greenwood, Oliver, Suddaby, & Sahlin, 2008; Thoenig, 2003; Weick, 1979). For example, higher education is an institution, while a particular university is the embodiment of that institution in an organization form with many norms, traditions, and cultural similarities in common with other universities but with unique traditions based on its history and cultural positioning. Institutionalism refers to the widespread acceptance of formal organizational structures and norms (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).

The concept of rationalized myths in organizations is grounded in literature on institutionalism (Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, & Licari, 2015; March & Olsen, 1989; Portillo & Humphrey, 2018). This builds from March and Olsen’s (1989) discussion of logics of appropriateness. Rather than considering rationalized decision-making through a logic of consequentiality—individuals choosing actions based on the assumed outcomes—March and Olsen argue individuals employ a logic of appropriateness where behavior is guided by a sense of identity—an individual’s actions align with their perceived role in the larger collective (March & Olsen, 1989). In essence, individuals may not have all of the tools to know or understand what the consequences of their actions will be, preventing purely rational decisions (Simon, 1947). Instead, individuals and organizations often choose actions based on what they feel is expected of them and appropriate for their role (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).

Whereas early sociopolitical institutionalists focus a great deal on how individuals make decisions within the organization, New Institutionalism builds on these models to focus on the external social and political environment in which organizations are embedded (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Organizations live up to the expectations placed on them by external stakeholders and the pressure within their environment. Legitimacy is an essential part of institutionalism (Suchman, 1995). Organizations able to adapt to external expectations are seen as rational and legitimate, while organizations that resist, or refuse to adapt to prevailing norms, are seen as irrational and illegitimate. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) introduce the idea of organizational isomorphism—the process of organizations in similar fields institutionalizing similar sets of rules, policies, and norms. As organizations rely on isomorphic pressure to adapt their internal structures, they shift their focus from measurements of efficiency and effectiveness, to cues from the external environment of success. Legitimacy comes from the demonstration of isomorphic practices, rather than measures of technical success (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). One mechanism of isomorphic practices involves mimicking other organizations in the field perceived as powerful, encouraging certain practices to become institutionalized across organizations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Organizations adapt to expectations of the field by taking on similar policies and practices until their actions become taken-for-granted norms of behavior. In short, “cultural definitions determine how the organization is built, how it is run, and simultaneously, how it is understood and evaluated. Within this tradition, legitimacy and institutionalism are virtually synonymous. Both phenomena empower organizations primarily by making them seem natural and meaningful” (Suchman, 1995, p. 576).

Together institutional legitimacy and institutionalized myths combine to form an endless feedback loop used to understand organizations and reinforce their primary functions. Organizations use myths to establish their legitimacy and connect with broader societal norms and values. Once an organization is seen as legitimate, it continues to promote the same institutional myths, even though the myths may be far removed from the actual functions of the organization and possess little empirical evidence justifying their need (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).

Rationalized myths grow explicitly from the political and social expectations of key constituents outside of organizations, with a reliance on external social forces to guide the adoption of new policies within organizations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). They refer to widespread social understandings that may manifest in policies or practices that are effectively taken for granted as the right way to adapt and function. We can consider local public service careers an institution with specific hiring decisions, norms, rules, and policies in individual local governments. In this article, we use the framework of institutionalism to explore the myth of bureaucratic neutrality and professional merit in local government hiring. The institutionalization of merit-based hiring in municipal governments exemplifies a rationalized myth diffused throughout the field, and ushered in structural supports for racialized and gendered inequities that have been foundational to the field for more than a century. As the opening example of the New Jersey police department highlights, organizations regularly rely on written tests as a demonstration of merit for hiring. Regardless of how the written testing relates to the job functions candidates will be asked to perform, the results are seen as a fair way to rank candidates for a position. As part of the civil service reforms adopted by municipalities during the Progressive Era, testing for merit, particularly the use of examinations, remains a common practice among local public organizations (French, 2009; Roberts, 2010; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).

An institutional analysis of merit-based local government hiring highlights the lack of logic underlying some of our current practices. Specifically, our definitions of merit may not be related to the positions for which we are hiring; definitions may be a relic from external political pressure or expectations. Although, in modern local governments, we would like to think that merit-based, neutral hiring results in the best possible candidates filling open positions, we may in fact be institutionalizing practices that reinforce racialized and gendered hierarchies within public organizations. The resilience of the myth of bureaucratic neutrality continues to permeate hiring decisions at the local level. Recognizing that this is myth, influenced by historical, political, and cultural contexts rather than empirical reality, leads us to make more equitable decisions. In the next section, we discuss the origins of the myth of bureaucratic neutrality and merit-based hiring. Understanding the context in which this myth developed and spread throughout municipal hiring, becoming an entrenched, taken-for-granted practice, helps us think critically about how we are defining merit in modern hiring practices.

The Resilience of Myths: Diversity and Local Government Hiring

Scholars have noted the battle over civil service reform was seen as a fight between good and evil (Mosher, 1982; Van Riper, 1958). What is frequently over looked is that the movement was often racist and quite xenophobic (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). Many of the Progressives were deeply concerned about the rapid increase of immigrants into American society. This influx, as Diner (1997) notes, between 1890 and 1914 represents the largest period of immigration in American history. Although the overall percentage of immigrants in the population remains pretty much the same from 1860 (13.2) to 1910 (14.5), there is a noticeable change in the country of origin of these new arrivals. Most were not Protestant, as had been previous groups, and many spoke languages other than English (Diner, 1997). As the United States changed from a primarily Protestant, rural society to a cosmopolitan, urban society, many Progressives were concerned with not only issues of intermarriage and ethnic purity, but also how so many people would be assimilated at once (Berman, 1987; Hofstader, 1955). These dramatic changes in the population were a catalyst for municipal governments to adopt hiring practices that moved away from political patronage and emphasized neutral, merit-based hiring that reinforced the legitimacy of native-born White constituents. Reviewing the history of merit-based hiring in connection to the influx of immigrants into the United States allows us to highlight how the concept of merit developed a parochial standard of what was considered the “best” public employees.

In his seminal study The Philadelphia Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois (1899) contemplated why African Americans in Philadelphia were resistant to the emerging progressive reforms movement. Certainly, African Americans were not in love with corrupt and abusive tactics used by machine politicians in the city. But, even with that in mind, the community did not embrace the push for reform. What they knew in an extremely pragmatic way was that, while reforms offered the promise of neutrality, in practice the reforms were anything but neutral. The reforms were designed in principle and practice to benefit one population, generally native-born Whites, over others.

In the case of patronage, reform groups often appealed to the native-born Americans, by arguing that the deterioration in municipal life was due to the widespread suffrage given to immigrants and Negroes who were willing to sell their votes in return for patronage positions. In this context, the patronage system had to be reformed and replaced with a civil service system that would allow the native population to once again gain control over governmental affairs (Steffens, 1904).

This time period also matches a large migration of newly free slaves from the rural south to the northern cities. Often these new arrivals were blamed for many of the urban problems that developed during the 1800s, which included municipal corruption. The charges include machine politics, which provided favors in exchange for votes (Van Riper, 1958), and symbolizing the problems of city life (Hofstader, 1955). The perceived root of the problem was the suffrage movements of the 1800s and the extension of voting rights to many immigrants and African Americans across the country. Tragically, many in society viewed members of this population as being uneducated, unintelligent, or simply of a caste not sophisticated to make the complex decisions required by voting; they resented the power that could be obtained by these new groups if they voted in mass (Bryce, 1911; Du Bois, 1899).

During this time period, it was widely believed that immigrant suffrage had given rise to political machines dominated by races or immigrant groups who were not fit to rule or self-govern (White, 1890). Du Bois is important because his work allows one to see that this belief system was used against the Black population as well. What also emerges in the literature of this period is how the actions of immigrant groups are perceived as distinctly different from the actions of those in the native-born population. For example, James Bryce perceived that Native-born Americans were a better class of people than the newly arrived immigrants. As a result, Bryce argued that Native-born Americans were capable of seeing politics as a means for creating and producing a better society for all, as opposed to the immigrant who could only see government as a means for building their own individual power (Bryce, 1911). It should be noted that some reformers, including noted muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, pushed back against this view. Steffens (1904) argued that the anti-immigrant sentiment was misplaced, declaring “. . . Philadelphia, the purest of all, and the most hopeless” (p. 2). He added that

Chicago and New York, both mongrel-bred, but the one a triumph of reform, the other the best example of good government that I had seen. The “foreign element” excuse is one of the hypocritical lies that save us from the clear sight of ourselves. (Steffen, 1904, pp. 2-3)

Yet, the “foreign element” argument was seen as legitimate in the eyes of many. In this sense, it would seem only logical that members of the native population must be in control over governmental affairs. Tolbert and Zucker (1983) argue that much of the diffusion of civil service reform in municipal governments can be traced to broad understandings of legitimacy and the isomorphic pressure local governments faced to take up civil service reform in the early 20th century. The push for local government reforms, which formalized the hiring process, and push for rationalized “merit” based hiring were not, in fact, found in the law. Although the Pendleton Act of 1883 did require the formalization of federal hiring, it did not mention municipal reforms. There are a number of potential explanations for why municipal governments adopted civil service reform, including the compelling case made by Tolbert and Zucker (1983) connecting civil service reform to the institutional forces legitimating civil service procedures. However, we argue that a large source of external legitimacy for the civil service reform was related to an increase in nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Unfortunately, that part of the history is often left out of the narrative. Instead, the lasting legacy of civil service reform is seen as the taken-for-granted, “rational” merit-based hiring practices that have been adopted by nearly all municipal governments for more than a century (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).

Discussion and Conclusion

The idea of objective hiring based on the merit of candidates is foundational to the field of public administration and the practice of local governance. However, historical and contemporary legal challenges assert that testing may not be objective, lead to the most meritorious candidates, and/or ensure government employment that is representative of the communities being served. Increasingly, social science informs us that a diversity of perspectives increases good decision-making in organizations and organizational performance (Andrews, Ashworth, & Meier, 2014; Herring, 2009). Diversity of experiences is not just a normative good, but also empirically tied to better organizational outcomes. For example, Andrews et al. (2014) find the presence of women and minorities in English fire service leads to greater organizational effectiveness. This is often difficult to square with the rationalized myth of bureaucratic neutrality.

As we explore the history of bureaucratic neutrality, we see that bureaucratic neutrality itself has racialized and gendered origins. The myth of bureaucratic neutrality has been reinforced in hiring practices throughout local governments, but can be specifically seen in hiring and promotion practices related to testing. With origins in Progressive Era reforms, civil service testing continues to reinforce racial and gender hierarchies within local government hiring. Although over time, our justifications for testing have shifted from blatantly racialized reasoning to arguments of testing as objective ways to evaluate candidates. The shifting in reasoning, however, is not necessarily related to a shift in practice. As the example at the start of our article shows, local government testing for employment continues to be challenged as it perpetuates a lack of representation in hiring practices, without being clearly connected to job performance.

This article uses institutionalism as an analytical tool to understand how the myth of bureaucratic neutrality has been used to maintain and reinforce inequity in local government hiring practices. While institutionalism has traditionally been used to understand organizational behavior, this article expands on those discussions and connects institutionalized organizational behavior to inequity and social justice through a systematic review of the rationalized myth of objective testing and neutral hiring. Specifically, the widespread acceptance of organizational norms and inability to question the functionality of those norms can lead to inequities like those in the local New Jersey police departments. For scholars and practitioners of public administration and public employment, this means we must carefully consider the rationalized myths of the field. How should we approach research and practice in public administration in light of the myth of bureaucratic neutrality? Below, we discuss some practical steps scholars and practitioners can take to push back on the rationalized myth of bureaucratic neutrality in local government hiring practices.

Knowing the history of the field is an important step in pushing back on rationalized myths and inaccurate portrayals of neutrality. As scholars before us have argued, even at its historical roots, public administration was never purely about objective implementation of political decision-maker’s policies. Svara (1998) writes, “It is important for academics to get their intellectual history right and stop presenting simplistic and historically inaccurate explanations of how the field began and evolved” (p. 51). Similarly, as Waldo (1948) discussed Wilson’s classic politics-administration dichotomy, he pushed back on the possibility of a full separation between the political and administrative duties of government. Instead, he suggests that Wilson was offering a normative model for analyzing government action, a way of understanding how things “ought to be,” a model in line with the times in which he was writing. Svara (1998) and Waldo (1948) both demonstrate the power of the institutionalized myth of bureaucratic neutrality that was supported by a push for a politics-administration dichotomy. While both scholars advocate for knowing our own intellectual history more deeply, modern scholars and practitioners also acknowledge there is “overwhelming evidence that politics and administration are not separate. Yet vestiges of the distinction remain” (Rainey, 1990, p. 173). To push back on the rationalized myths of our field, like the myth of bureaucratic neutrality, we must genuinely engage with the intellectual history of our field.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we saw a shift in public administration, which became embodied in New Public Administration. In New Public Administration, Frederickson (1980) asks scholars and practitioners not only to push back on the idea of being neutral, but to also lean in to the normative aspects of the field. He argues, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales” (p. 312). Frederickson advocates for a simple question, “for whom” are government programs and decisions working efficiently and effectively. In essence, he asks who benefits from the outcomes of administrative work. Through an institutionalism lens, we advocate not only for a question for “for whom,” but also “by whom.” Knowing that process matters, who is present and engaged throughout the decision-making process makes a difference. By being proactive, and considering whose experiences we are using as a model for norms, rules, and policies, we can be more intentional in our quest for social equity.

The purpose of this article is to examine how the myth of bureaucratic neutrality can institutionalize inequality within the field. Revisiting the example at the start of our article, we must be conscious of how the policies and rules we put in place benefit our goals and values in local government hiring. How do we ensure the requirements for employment map onto the needed skills for the job, rather than the presumed pathway into public service? How do we ensure the methods used to evaluate job candidates and employees do not hold bias? Pushing back on rationalized myths means critically analyzing the decisions we make and why we make them. Rather than adopting best practices or policies from similar organizations because they seem to be doing well, we must ask ourselves if these practices help us move forward with our values and do the practices connect with the goals we have in our organization. We challenge scholars to recognize the history of our field and critically examine foundational concepts with the potential to reinforce inequality. Although this is difficult work with the potential to create contentious debates, it is important we recognize the structure on which our field is built and the implications this has for practice.