The ways in which societies navigate the allocation of resources is an old and ongoing sociological debate. What is newly emerging, however, is recognition among social scientists, workplace experts, and legal scholars that merit-based compensation in the workforce is the new arena in which deliberation over social equity is unfolding. Growing evidence from fields including social psychology and organizational behavior among others, suggest meritocratic processes do not operate as simply and equitably as is often assumed. These findings have motivated a burgeoning shift toward understanding merit not as a static characteristic of individuals, but rather as a dynamic social process. This shift holds much sociological promise, however, no new theoretical framework has yet been outlined. Drawing on contemporary sociological studies of pay-for-performance contexts as illustrative examples, I argue that merit assessment and interpretation are moments within a larger socially constructed process of merit production. Taking the social and contextual dimensions of merit production into account reveals the susceptibility of merit judgments to a host of non-meritocratic factors and cognitive filters such as implicit bias and motivated reasoning. However, formulating merit as a social construction provides a coherent framework for creating powerful solutions for complex issues of workplace discrimination, diversity, and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]