Download Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (published a paper

Davis–Moore (1945)
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (published a paper in 1945)
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, two American sociologists, developed the ideas of
Talcott Parsons. They suggested that stratification existed in every known human
society. They attempted to explain this as a universal necessity for stratification in all
social systems. They agreed with Parson’s idea that all social systems shared certain
functional prerequisites that had to be met if the system was to survive and operate
efficiently. One functional prerequisite, put forward by Davis and Moore, was effective
role allocation and performance.
This meant that:
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all social roles (in effect, occupations) must be filled
these roles must be filled by those best able to perform them
the necessary training for these roles must be undertaken
and that these roles must be performed conscientiously.
Davis and Moore argued that all societies needed some mechanism for insuring effective
role allocation and performance. This mechanism was stratification, which they saw as
a system that attached unequal rewards and privileges to the different positions in
society. If the people and positions that made up society did not differ in important
respects there would be no need for stratification. Further to this, certain positions
were and are more functionally important than others and a major function of
stratification was and still is to match the most able people with the functionally most
important positions. This was achieved by attaching high rewards to these positions.
This would provide people with motivation and incentive.
For Davis and Moore, stratification was a device by which societies ensured that
the most qualified persons conscientiously filled the most important positions.
In this way, society would be a meritocracy.
Meritocracy: A system of stratification where those most qualified get the highest
positions in the hierarchy and those with the least qualifications get the lower positions
in the hierarchy.