Published on: July 20, 2026 at 11:00 am
Under growing pressure to operate as meritocracies, organizations’ leaders often fall into what Academy of Management Scholar Emilio Castilla of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calls the “best-practice trap”—the tendency to adopt widely accepted solutions that sound effective but may actually be poorly suited to their own organizational context and challenges. According to Castilla, this is a common mistake executives make when trying to ensure merit-based hiring and promotion.
“I always ask, ‘best practices for whom?’” Castilla explains. “What works for one organization might not necessarily work for another, yet many leaders, looking at what other companies are doing around talent management, equal opportunity, or fairness, simply copy those practices without first studying whether they fit their own specific circumstances.
“Organizations differ in fundamental ways—in the kinds of jobs they offer, how performance is evaluated and rewarded, and the outcomes they seek to attain,” he says. “As a result, practices that appear successful elsewhere may have little impact—or even unintended consequences—when applied without careful adaptation.”
Castilla argues that many popular initiatives can become little more than window dressing if they are not custom-made to address an organization’s unique challenges. These include mandating broad diversity training programs for managers, offering workshops to raise awareness of implicit bias, using blind screening in recruitment and hiring, removing gendered language from job postings and other recruitment messages, and relying on AI tools for candidate screening and selection. While each of these approaches may be effective in certain organizational settings, none is universally beneficial.
Instead, Castilla emphasizes the importance of starting with a careful diagnosis so that organizations can identify where and how to intervene most effectively in addressing their specific challenges related to meritocracy and fairness.
“It’s critical to begin by collecting and analyzing data on recruitment, hiring, and promotion decisions,” Castilla says. “Who applies? Who gets hired? Who gets promoted?
“I also recommend examining the processes behind advancement and rewards,” he says. “That allows you to identify your talent management blind spots, where problems may actually be occurring, and therefore to design and implement solutions that are better matched to the specific issues your organization faces.
“Rather than copying practices, you adopt relevant solutions that fit the specific issue you have.”
From there, organizations should implement practices that promote fairness and equal opportunity, grounded in criteria clearly linked to job performance—specific, relevant work experience, skills, and capabilities.
“Once we decide how to best intervene, we need to be rigorous in evaluating whether those interventions are actually working,” Castilla adds.
“This requires a much more analytical and data-driven approach, along with transparency and accountability from senior leaders and managers,” he says.
“It is not easy work, but it is essential if organizations are serious about building true meritocracies.”
