Suppose there was a concern whose employees had to produce two kinds of products: widgets and squidgets. Each employee was supposed to devote about 2/5 of effort to widgets, and 2/5 of effort to squidgets, and 1/5 of effort to miscellaneous administrative tasks.

Everyone pretty much made an equal number of widgets according to a regularly scheduled plan. Some were better widgeters than others, that is true, but nobody didn't do widgets. With the squidgets, however, there was a very wide distribution in results. Some produced almost none at all; some produced them in huge quantities, sometimes several magnitudes greater than the average.

Since excellent squidgeters were also doing their share of widgeting, they would tend to work a little longer and harder. They might also have to spend their own personal money for squidget supplies and for traveling, since squidgeting often involved work outside the office. Sometimes you had to spend extra time just applying for special squidget funds, given out competitively--even though everyone, theoretically, was supposed to be squidgetting 40% of the time.

So here's the question. What would a fair weighting of widgets and squidgets look like? What would it mean to treat them equally in an evaluation process? How do we compare widgets, judged mostly on a qualtitative scale, with squidgets, where distinctions are more likely to show up as much larger differences of quantity? Is it really possible to treat them equally?

If they were really treated equally, then that would entail a huge bias in favor of squidgets. People who only produce widgets, with little or no squidgets, would be seen as only doing 60% of their jobs. Those with both squidgets and widgets would always come out ahead, even if their widgets were a little less excellent.

On the other hand, this approach would quickly lead to a complaint about "too much emphasis on squidgets." To place more weight on widgets, by the same token, would involve overvaluing small differences on a qualitative scale, in contrast to the much larger absolute differences on the squidgeting scale. One worker might have four or five squidgets in a year that someone else had zero or one.

Of course, we could have philosophical discussions about whether widgets or squidgets are really more valuable. Remember, though, that the institution already has assigned them a value of 40% each, in this particular thought-experiment. We could say that that widgets are really more important. After all--they have to get done before we even think about squidgets. But technically each worker is responsible for devoting 40% of effort to squidgets too.

Now say that squidgets were only 20%. Widgets total 60 percent, and each worker is now responsible for six annual megawidgets instead of four.

Colleague A has zero squidgets, and gets a 100% rating in quality rating in widgets.

Colleague B has about four megasquidgets, and is pretty much at the top of the 20%, lets say 19%. But she only gets an 80% rating in widgets.

Will stipulate that they both score 17 out of 20 in administration.

So A has a maximum rating of 77% percent. (The maximum he can get is 80, in fact.)

B, on the other hand, has 85%. B still comes out ahead. Not only that, but she has the chance to approach 100 by improving in the other categories. A will always be capped at 80, as long as he doesn't touch squidgets at all.

Imagine the students at a particular university on the West Coast start up a widget club. They develop their own tradition of making widgets, and have internalized certain standards. They all pretty much agree, in other words, on what makes a good widget and who the best widget makers are.

A student from another university on the East Coast transfers to West Coast University in her junior year and notices that they have a widget club. She joins, but finds herself at odds with the other members of the club, since on the East Coast there is a quite different idea of what makes a good widget. She starts her own rival club, "Eastern Style Widgeting for the continentally displaced."

Members of the two clubs pretty much ignored each other. There was always that one guy who, even though he practiced the West Coast style, insisted on joining the East Coast club (or vice-versa). The idea was that you should be able to practice whatever form of widgeting you wanted, in whichever of the two clubs you chose. The other perspective was expressed by the proverb: "If you want to practice East Coast Widgeting, move to the East Coast."

Some students tried to get a third club going, for those who wanted to fuse the two styles. The problem was that there were always tensions between those who were "really" more Eastern or Western.