Reproducing the Myth of Meritocracy in a CEO Autobiography and Mitigating it in the Classroom

Inequality is widely regarded to be a persistent institution—thanks, in part, to a meritocratic discourse that perpetuates it. Based on this understanding, we analyze a particular subset of that discourse that is consumed by the business elite, to explore the mechanisms of reproduction that characterize it and discuss what management educators can do to mitigate this reproduction. Drawing on Jack Welch’s autobiography as a classic example of the CEO-autobiography genre and, more broadly, the discourse of the business elite, we explicate three mechanisms through which the genre enables the reproduction of a meritocratic ideology. We then propose three readily practicable pedagogical approaches that can mitigate these reproductive mechanisms. We encourage management educators to teach students to approach this book and the broader genre more critically, to diminish its reproductive impact and to do so in the context of taking personal responsibility for addressing Grand Challenges such as inequality.