Call for Papers

This sub-theme explores how creative ideas and approaches can disrupt (or maintain) social hierarchies in and around organizations. Specifically, it focuses on two societal hierarchies that underpin economic inequality: social class and caste. Class and caste, as invisible inequalities, manifest as “uneven possession of and access to resources and opportunities to engage in value creation, appropriation, and distribution based on attributes and characteristics that are not readily apparent or noticeable” (Bapuji et al., 2023: 2). The invisibility per se often creates avenues for creativity in both disrupting and maintaining them. Against a backdrop of growing economic disparity – often reflected in and sustained by class and caste hierarchies – research on them has the potential to elucidate how to disrupt inequality in more creative ways and enact more equitable outcomes, ultimately imagining new ways forward (Bapuji et al., 2024; Kish-Gephart et al., 2023).
 
Recent events have pointed to the endurance of invisible inequalities related to class and caste, including the disparate impact of COVID-19 on low-wage workers (Gould & Kassa, 2021), restrictions in access to rental properties (Thorat et al., 2015) and labour market outcomes (Belmi et al., 2023; Soundararajan et al., 2024), the disproportionate burden of the climate crisis on poor communities (Center for Sustainable Systems, 2021), the inequality revealed in the Rana Plaza disaster (Reinecke & Donaghey, 2015), and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal to promote access to decent work (UN, 2021).
 
As inequality widens (Amis et al., 2020) and class- and caste-based exclusion persists in and around organizations (Chrispal et al., 2021; Gray & Kish-Gephart, 2013), this sub-theme explores how organizations, individuals, and groups in and around organizations, maintain class and caste inequalities. For example, this may occur through segregating classes by building firewalls, justifying differential levels of autonomy, or enacting withdrawal behaviors (Gray & Kish-Gephart, 2013), or using merit, residence location, and food habits to maintain caste inequalities (Subramanian, 2019; Soundararajan et al., 2024). In addition, the sub-theme explores how organizations, individuals, and groups in and around organizations adopt (often creative) approaches to challenge these hierarchies. For example, to spark positive organizational transformation, such as when privileged individuals join underprivileged allies to advocate for equality (Scully et al., 2018), traditional workplace mentoring relationships are rethought (Scully et al., 2017) or underprivileged individuals change or hide their residence location, language/accent, or food habits (Soundararajan et al., 2024). Class- and caste-based discrimination, as well as interventions, can occur across levels and within levels, including:

• between organizations and society (i.e., myths, ideologies, or systems associated with privilege and power);

• between organizations and institutions (e.g., educational systems, associations, labour unions, or political systems);

• between organizational actors and key stakeholders (e.g., communities, corporate governance, shareholders, or venture capitalists and investors);

• between individuals within and outside of organizations (e.g., managers, employees, clients, or customers); and

• intrapersonally (e.g., the processes related to class or caste identity or privilege work).

 
We invite conceptual and empirical papers that explore creative ways to disrupt class- and caste-based hierarchies. To the extent that disruption requires revealing the often taken-for-granted and invisible class- and caste-based hierarchies, we also invite conceptual and empirical papers that consider how these hierarchies are creatively maintained. Research questions that fit within this sub-theme include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How are class and caste hierarchies maintained in organizational contexts in creative ways? What organizational, group, or individual-level conditions enable them? How can we better understand these creative ways?

• How can organizations (and the individuals within them) confront class and caste inequality through partnerships? What interactions create novel paths forward? What exchanges serve to maintain societal hierarchies?

• How does entrepreneurship sustain or question class and caste stratification? How do founders from marginalized caste or class groups bring unique strengths, perspectives, or skills to enact entrepreneurship as an act of emancipation? What interventions or conditions allow entrepreneurship to be a tool for social mobility?

• How are technology and information systems utilized to maintain or challenge caste and class inequalities within organizational contexts?

• How are class and caste inequalities creatively preserved within supply chains, and how can multiple stakeholders collaborate to address them?

• How can individuals engage with their own class and caste identity and begin to better understand how they may be involved in the perpetuation of inequality? How can individuals make sense of their own advantage or disadvantage in a way that motivates new pathways?

• What events have increased awareness of caste and class and their impact on organizational life? How do these events shift conversations about what equality looks like? How do these conversations elucidate the history of class, caste, and work?

• What types of interventions improve class- and caste-salient interactions between employees? What policies, processes, or systems provide a context for more positive interactions between employees from different groups?

• How do class and caste intersect with each other and with other sources of advantage or disadvantage, including gender, neurodiversity, disability, or immigration status?

• How can organizations enhance people’s willingness to think and act differently when making sense of their or others’ position on societal hierarchies? How can organizations foster interactions between employees that disrupt invisible inequality?

• How can organizations learn from interacting with other institutions (education, political, public, etc.)? What new forms of coordination between organizations and other institutions may impact inequality?

References

• Amis, J.M., Mair, J., & Munir, K.A. (2020): “The Organizational Reproduction of Inequality.” Academy of Management Annals, 14 (1), 195–230.

• Bapuji, H., Ertug, G., Soundararajan, V., & Shaw, J.D. (2024): “Invisible Inequalities: Barriers, Challenges, and Opportunities.” Journal of Management, 50 (3), 835–848.
• Belmi, P., Raz, K., Neale, M., & Thomas-Hunt, M. (2023): “The Consequences of Revealing First-Generational Status.” Organization Science, 35 (2), 667–697.
• Center for Sustainable Systems (2021): Environmental Justice Factsheet. Publication no. CSS17-16. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
• Chrispal, S., Bapuji, H., & Zietsma, C. (2021): “Caste and organization studies: Our silence makes us complicit.” Organization Studies, 42 (9), 1501–1515.
• Gould, E., & Kassa, M. (2021): Low-wage, low-hours workers were hit hardest in the COVID-19 recession. The State of Working America 2020 employment report. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute; https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-2020-employment-report/.
• Gray, B., & Kish-Gephart, J.J. (2013): “Encountering social class differences at work: How ‘class work’ perpetuates inequality.” Academy of Management Review, 38 (4), 670–699.
• Kish-Gephart, J.J., Moergen, J.N., Tilton, J.D., & Gray, B. (2023): “Social Class and Work: A Review and Organizing Framework.” Journal of Management, 49 (1), 509–565.
• Reinecke, J., & Donaghey, J. (2015): “After Rana Plaza: Building coalitional power for labour rights between unions and (consumption-based) social movement organisations.” Organization, 22 (5), 720–740.
• Scully, M., Blake-Beard, S., Felicio, D., & O’Neill, R.M. (2017): “Climbing the ladder or kicking it over? Bringing mentoring and class into critical contact.” In: A.J. Murrell & S. Blake-Beard (eds.): Mentoring Diverse Leaders. New York: Routledge, 161–184.
• Scully, M., Rothenberg, S., Beaton, E.E., & Tang, Z. (2018): “Mobilizing the wealthy: Doing ‘privilege work’ and challenging the roots of inequality.” Business & Society, 57 (6), 1075–1113.
• Soundararajan, V., Sharma, G., & Bapuji, H. (2024): “Caste, Social Capital and Precarity of Labour Market Intermediaries: The case of dalit labour contractors in India.” Organization Studies, 45 (7), 961–985.
• Subramanian, A. (2019): The Caste of Merit. Engineering Education in India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Thorat, S., Banerjee, A., Mishra, V.K., & Rizvi, F. (2015): “Urban Rental Housing Market.” Economic and Political Weekly, 27, 47–53.
• United Nations (2021): Sustainable Development Goals: 17 Goals to Transform Our World, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/.
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