A growing body of research associates merit-based recruitment of public managers with improved government performance. Building on Weber, this literature has primarily examined merit recruitment through a functional lens, treating it as formal staffing procedures designed to identify leaders capable of managing public organizations effectively. These studies suggest that merit-based recruitment brings into public service managers with stronger professional skills, greater esprit de corps, and motivations aligned with professional rather than political or private interests (e.g., Rauch & Evans, 2000). This perspective has paid less attention to the meanings that managerial recruitment conveys within organizations and to how employees interpret the process through which their superiors are selected.
This article argues that managerial merit recruitment is not only a mechanism for selecting capable leaders but also an organizational signal shaping employees’ attitudes and behavior. Because managerial appointments are highly visible, public servants observe not only who is selected but also how selection decisions are made. Merit-based practices are therefore interpreted and sometimes contested, conveying shared understandings about what is appropriate and legitimate within the organization. In line with HRM system strength theory, these interpretations provide a frame through which employees form expectations about new managers and evaluate their actions. The article asks: How does the meaning organizational members attach to the merit-based recruitment of their superiors shape employees’ job attitudes and behavioral intentions?
I address this question through a sequential mixed-methods study in Chile. First, I conducted more than 35 semi-structured interviews with public servants in organizations where managers were appointed through either merit-based recruitment or discretionary selection. These interviews informed the experiment. Second, I conducted a conjoint experiment with 690 Chilean public officials to isolate the effect of merit-based recruitment from the effectiveness-related managerial attributes associated with it. Finally, I conducted two focus groups with public officials to triangulate the findings and examine the mechanisms through which recruitment shapes employee attitudes.
The conjoint experiment shows that employees report higher expected job satisfaction and work motivation, and lower turnover intentions, when managers are appointed through merit-based recruitment rather than discretionary selection, even after accounting for managers’ qualifications and other effectiveness-related characteristics. The qualitative evidence corroborates these findings and indicates that merit recruitment generates positive responses because it signals procedural fairness, impartiality, and respect for professional norms. These signals strengthen confidence in organizational processes and foster more favorable attitudes toward managers and the workplace. By showing that managerial merit recruitment influences employees not only through the characteristics of those selected but also through the meanings attached to the selection process, this study contributes to research on meritocracy, strategic human resource management, and public management. The organizational consequences of merit recruitment depend not only on who is selected, but also on how selection occurs.
