Social Mobility and Promotion of Officers to Senior Ranks in the Royal Navy: Meritocracy or Class Ceiling?

• Author: P. Matthijs Bal,Stephen M. Clark,Dieu Hack-Polay
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20905118
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 48(1) 92 –114

Social Mobility and

Promotion of Officers to

Senior Ranks in the

Royal Navy: Meritocracy

or Class Ceiling?

Stephen M. Clark

1

, Dieu Hack-Polay

2

,

and Matthijs Bal

2

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which socioeconomic background affects the

chances of promotion to senior ranks within the Royal Navy and how the upwardly

mobile often face a “class ceiling.” The researchers collected quantitative data within

the Royal Navy. The research found a disproportionate overrepresentation of

officers from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, creating a homogenous

upper echelon and self-selecting elite hierarchy. The authors argue for the sys-

tematic collection of socioeconomic background data and longitudinal analysis to

focus efforts toward engendering the conditions for social mobility and the ability to

quantitatively assess the impact of policy changes on future social mobility outcomes.

The research contributes to understand contemporary social mobility issues and is

the first quantitative analysis of Royal Navy officers’ socioeconomic backgrounds.

The research provides perspectives on which other Armed Forces (including the

United States) that face diversity issues could reflect. The article repositions military

issues in mainstream academic discourse.

Keywords

Royal Navy, social mobility, meritocracy, inequality, Armed Forces

1

Royal Navy, UK

2

University of Lincoln, UK

Corresponding Author:

Dieu Hack-Polay, Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS,

United Kingdom.

Email: dhackpolay@lincoln.ac.uk

Armed Forces & Society

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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Article

P.

Clark et al. 93

In the 1970s, a study into military officer selection concluded that notwithstanding

major public discourses about the necessity to widen the socioeconomic back-

grounds of recruits in the elite professions and progression within them should be

contingent upon seniority and proven abilities. However, in the United States and in

the UK, recruitment and promotion were still biased toward those who attended

private education and some elite state institutions (Kamarck, 2017; Salaman &

Thompson, 1978). Grusky (1975) earlier examined the socioeconomic backgrounds

of Royal Navy officers. He concluded that there was significant difference between

lower and higher rank officers in a number of key social variables, with those

holding higher ranks more likely to have come from upper socioeconomic back-

grounds and fee-paying school education. Notwithst anding, the researchers con-

cluded that extrapolation from the makeup of lower and middle ranking officers

indicated that the upper echelons of the Royal Navy officer corps would become

more socially representative, “with leaders recr uited from more proletarian seg-

ments of society” (Grusky, 1975, p. 50). However, nearly two decades later, Von

Zugbach (1993) presented significant evidence that inequalities were persistent in

the British Armed Forces.

Since these studies, a major societal change in the subsequent two generations

was the exponential expansion of university provision, which saw a greater than

3-fold increase in higher education participation in many developed countries

including the United States and the UK (Alvaredo et al., 2017; Chowdry et al.,

2013; O’Mahoney, 2018). It was thought that this woul d result in increased so cial

mobility as those from less advantaged backgrounds had greater opportunity to

obtain the necessary academic entry requirements to gain access to higher income

jobs. However, recently academics have been vociferous in raising the issue of

stagnant social mobility. They argue that social mobility has worsened since the

1970s (Alvaredo et al., 2017; O’Mahoney, 2018; Piketty, 2017). For instance,

Laurison and Friedman (2015) found that even when the socioeconomically dis-

advantaged (those attending state schools and attaining lower qualifications) are

able to secure admission into elite occupations, they are much less likely to

“achieve the same levels of success as those from more privileged backgrounds”

and “face a powerful ‘class ceiling’ in terms of earnings” (p. 28). The concept of a

class ceiling describes how the socially mobile experience considerable disadvan-

tage within elite occupations due to socioeconomic or class discrimination (Laur-

ison & Friedman, 2015).

This study investigates the extent to which the class ceiling is a factor in the

promotion into the Senior Ranks in the Royal Navy Logistics Branch in the UK. The

Royal Navy comprises c.32,500 personnel, of whom 6,800 are officers (comparative

figures: Army 79,000 personnel [12,900 officers]; Royal Air Force 32,900 personnel

[7,800 officers]). The Royal Navy comprises “ratings” and “officers”; in civilian

terms, officers take on management and higher level leadersh ip responsibilities,

while ratings can be seen as the workforce. In terms of professional roles, the Royal

2Armed Forces & Society XX(X)