Meritocratic promotion—promoting the best performing employees—is a pervasive strategy to fill leader positions. However, the predictive validity of this strategy is unclear due to diverging theoretical predictions from different research disciplines and due to inconsistent empirical results. Further, the different disciplines rarely acknowledge and refer to each other, thereby impeding a cumulative understanding of meritocratic promotion. With our systematic review, we intend to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue by (i) providing an overview of pertinent theoretical approaches including their deviating predictions, (ii) proposing mediators and moderators of the relationship of employee performance and leader performance to improve future research on meritocratic promotion, (iii) assessing the study quality, and (iv) summarizing and discussing empirical findings to advance the understanding of the predictive validity of meritocratic promotion. We conclude by presenting theoretical conclusions, point towards future research directions, and provide guidance for future research, including a checklist. We also discuss practical implications for human resource management.

精英晋升-提拔表现最好的员工-是填补领导职位的普遍策略。但是，由于来自不同研究领域的理论预测不一致以及实证结果不一致，因此该策略的预测有效性尚不清楚。此外，不同的学科很少相互承认和相互参照，从而阻碍了对精英晋升的累积理解。通过系统的审查，我们打算通过（i）提供有关理论方法的概述，包括其偏离的预测，（ii）提出调解人和调解员绩效与领导者绩效之间的关系，以改善未来对精英管理的研究，开展跨学科对话。晋升；（iii）评估学习质量，（iv）总结和讨论实证研究结果，以加深对择优晋升的预测有效性的理解。我们通过提出理论结论，指出未来的研究方向，并为未来的研究提供指导（包括清单）作为结论。我们还将讨论对人力资源管理的实际影响。