Universitet är stora meritokratiska organisationer där strävan efter konkurrenskraft aldrig tar slut. Universitetets främsta roll är att utbilda, forska och bygga ny kunskap. Medarbetares kompetens och ytterst meriter samt att bygga rätt sammansättning av meritering är därför centralt för universitetet. Det blir därmed viktigt för universiteten att behålla de bästa medarbetarna och motivera medarbetarna till att arbeta mot organisationens mål. Denna studie behandlar medarbetarna på Luleå tekniska universitets syn på relationen mellan motivation, återkoppling, belöning, prestation och befordran. Syftet med denna studie är att identifiera hur meritering ser ut och är relaterat till prestationerna i en meritokratisk organisation. Genom att uppnå syftet kan vi bidra och inspirera till vidare forskning om hur medarbetare med långsiktiga mål och tydliga karriärvägar kan uppfatta styrning. För att uppnå detta har litteratursökningar i vetenskapliga artiklar gjorts och empiriska underlag samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. En abduktiv ansats har tillämpats i studien. Resultatet visar att det finns ett tydligt samband mellan medarbetarnas prestation och befordran. Men att det i förlängningen är starkare genom forskningen än undervisningen. Empirin visar även att intervjupersonerna främst ser de icke monetära belöningarna som bidragande faktorer till ökad motivation samt att återkoppling är viktigt för motivation. De anställda anser att de får tillräcklig återkoppling från studenterna men flertalet önskar mer återkoppling från chefer. / Universities are large meritocratic organizations where the pursuit of competitiveness never ends. The main role of universities is to educate, conduct research and discover new knowledge. Therefore are both the employees’ competence and the right composition of merit central to the universities. It thus becomes crucial for the universities to retain the best employees and motivate the employees to work towards the organization's goals. This study shows the employees at Luleå University of Technology's view of the correlation between motivation, feedback, reward, performance, and promotion. The purpose of the study is to find out what merit looks like and how it is related to the performance of a meritocratic organization. By achieving the purpose, we can contribute and inspire further research on how employees with long-term goals and clear career paths can perceive management control. To achieve this, literature searches in scientific articles have been done and empirical data has been collected through semi-structured interviews. An abductive approach has been applied in the study. The results show that the connection between employees' performance and promotion is stronger through research than teaching. The empiric also shows that the interviewees mainly see the non-monetary rewards as contributing factors to increased motivation and that feedback is important for motivation. The employees consider that they receive enough feedback from the students, but the majority want more feedback from managers.

This thesis is about hiring processes in the university sector. More particularly, the focus is to identify if the employment of lecturers obeys the principle of objectivity, impartiality and meritocracy. The thesis is based on a so-called mixed method research. Partly, the extent of compliance is tested in a quantitative survey of six Swedish universities, partly each one of the 73 employment notices is analyzed in a qualitative text analysis. The source of information is public government documents from the examined universities. The survey is limited only to include employments until further notice. Therefore, all sorts of temporary employments are excluded. The focus is on the academic subjects of social science, sociology and political economy. Furthermore, the thesis only investigates employments from the years of 2011-2019. To create an understanding in what way the state institutions should handle their exercise of power, the theory Quality of Government (QoG) is being used. The theory is also used for analysis and as an inspiration for the assay scheme, which is used to assess if the employments are considered “narrower” or “more open”. The variables used in the survey are; notification time, number of applicants, the use of peer review, language of the announcement, and a type of “employment conversion”, made possible by law. The result of the thesis shows that there is an extensive amount of employments which in one way or another violates the principle of impartiality. For example: 24 percent of the employments has less than 2 applicants. 17 percent of the employments is missing impartial peer reviews. 89 percent of the employments are only given noticed in Swedish. 29 percent of the announcement texts are written in a narrow, excluding way. To sum up, we can see indications of partial employments. There are distinctive variations between the universities and among the academic subjects. The most important conclusion of this thesis is that all partial employments are a problem, with shortcomings in quality and in public trust as consequences.

Meritocracy is a much-debated concept in both academia and society in general. Previous studies mostly defined meritocracy in terms of talent and effort. However, even if there exists an academic acceptance of the complexity and the multitude of dimensions of meritocracy in general, little has been said about the cultural prerequisites of meritocracy. This shows a need to be explicit about exactly what is meant by the term ‘meritocracy’. This paper aims to share new light on prerequisites of meritocracy with the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological studies of symbolic capital, with the backdrop understanding of Adam Smith’s theory on necessities. Furthermore, the study aims by adopting a reflexive approach of Bourdieu’s theories, to construct a new theoretical framework, set out to define the phenomena of meritocracy and its cultural prerequisites.