Inherited Advantage and the Myth of Meritocracy in Business Education in the UK
Abstract
Business schools are frequently presented as meritocratic institutions that reward talent, effort and entrepreneurial capability. This article examines how business education can simultaneously acknowledge inequality rhetorically while continuing to legitimize unequal outcomes pedagogically. Drawing genealogically on Louis Althusser while engaging selectively with institutional theory, the article develops the concept of pedagogical disavowal: the institutional organization of knowledge, evaluation and aspiration through which inherited structural advantage is reframed as individual merit while its historical foundations are marginalized within business education. Grounded in the UK context, the analysis argues that business schools can function as legitimacy‐producing institutions that help stabilize meritocratic understandings of inequality despite extensive public recognition of class advantage and elite reproduction. The article contributes to debates on merit, legitimacy and management education by distinguishing pedagogical disavowal from earlier accounts of ideological reproduction and hidden curriculum, specifying how legitimacy is sustained through routine pedagogical and organizational practices rather than ideology alone.