This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence.

这项研究探讨了精英管理如何作为一种集体的社会想象力来促进社会正义和公平，从而重现阶级和种姓的不平等，并助长道德暴力。我们在印度商学院的专业-管理班级的叙事中审问功绩话语。从经验上讲，我们利用访谈，对定性问卷的全文答复以及学生的诗歌。我们描述了商学院学生如何将优点表达为新自由主义道德，强调审慎，进取的态度和责任感。但是，这种积极的，令人向往的功绩掩盖了道德暴力行为，其中个人援引道德原则作为道德谴责和语言伤害的依据。这些道德暴力行为使处境不利的学生失去主观性，并导致沉默作为不平等的一种形式。我们通过关注道德暴力和反主体化，为不平等的组织研究做出贡献。我们详细介绍了话语权代理人在对抗和打断道德暴力方面的可能性。