FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Does having a more hierarchical society indicate a LESS developed, civilized,

society?

By:
Mochamad Arief Rahman Ramadhian
29116412

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
INSTITUT TEKNOLOGI BANDUNG

 The modern West has placed a high premium on the value of equality. Equal rights are
enshrined in law while old hierarchies of nobility and social class have been challenged, if not
completely dismantled. Few would doubt that global society is all the better for these changes.
But hierarchies have not disappeared. Society is still stratified according to wealth and status
in myriad ways.

On the other hand, the idea of a purely egalitarian world in which there are no
hierarchies at all would appear to be both unrealistic and unattractive. Nobody, on reflection,
would want to eliminate all hierarchies, for we all benefit from the recognition that some people
are more qualified than others to perform certain roles in society. We prefer to be treated by
senior surgeons not medical students, get financial advice from professionals not interns. Good
and permissible hierarchies are everywhere around us.

As a group, we believe that clearer thinking about hierarchy and equality is important
in business, politics and public life. We should lift the taboo on discussing what makes for a
good hierarchy. To the extent that hierarchies are inevitable, it is important to create good ones
and avoid those that are pernicious. It is also important to identify the ways in which useful
and good hierarchies support and foster good forms of equality. When we talk about hierarchies
here, we mean those distinctions and rankings that bring with them clear power differentials.

Hierarchies are often pernicious not because they distinguish between people, but
because they perpetuate these distinctions even when they are no longer merited or serve a
good purpose. In short, hierarchies become ossified. To protect against abuse by those with
higher status, hierarchies should also be domain-specific: hierarchies become problematic
when they become generalised, so that people who have power, authority or respect in one
domain command it in others too. Most obviously, we see this when holders of political power
wield disproportionate legal power, being if not completely above the law then at least subject
to less legal accountability than ordinary citizens. Hence, we need to guard against what we
might call hierarchical drift: the extension of power from a specific, legitimate domain to other,
illegitimate ones.

But are hierarchies compatible with human dignity? It’s important to recognise that
there are different forms of hierarchy as there are different forms of equality. The UN’s
Universal Declaration of Human Rights says in Article 1: ‘All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights.’ It is entirely compatible with this equal dignity that some should
be honoured more than others. In other words, we can acknowledge that individuals differ from
one another in embodying excellence of various sorts, and these various forms of human
excellence elicit from us a special kind of positive regard that philosophers call ‘appraisal
respect’. Appraisal respect is a form of esteem that we have for those who display certain
excellences: for example, for their high moral character, or their great skill in argument. Since
excellences are intrinsically comparative, people will inevitably be ranked through these
appraisals, and so to honour someone is to regard them as (in some particular respects) better
than people who embody or advance the value less. Equality here seems conceptually out of
place.