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With societal inequalities continuing to increase and organizations providing the vast majority of people with their income, we wanted to assess the ways in which organizational practices are implicated in the burgeoning of social and economic inequality. Following an integrative review of the literature drawn from across the social sciences, we found that the multiple ways in which five major organizational practices – hiring, role allocation, promotion, compensation and structuring – are enacted emerged as being central to the reproduction of inequality. We also uncovered how the persistence of these practices, and the inequality they induce, can be largely attributed to a constellation of three highly institutionalized myths, efficiency, meritocracy and positive globalization. Our analysis further reveals how, as scholars, we bear a corresponding responsibility to reconsider how we engage in research on and teaching about organizations. The implications of this for our future work are discussed.
As organizational scholars, we are accustomed to using theoretical lenses to understand organizational practices and outcomes. That is, we conceptualize what people do, feel and think in their everyday organizational interactions through the use of theoretical language and models to uncover individual and/or social antecedents and outcomes. We tend to ignore, however, how our own day-to-day work as scholars - doing research - is subjected to the same pressures, affected by similar factors, and should be accounted for through similar modes of analyses. We treat our studies and theories as solid anchor points and as objective truths rather than as constructions embedded within individual, organizational, field and societal contexts.
This volume is a must read for all researchers interested in understanding our own craft. Building on established traditions in the sociology of knowledge, we direct a reflective and critical gaze towards the structures, practices and meaning systems that ground and shape how we produce and consume managerial knowledge and organization theory. The volume includes both empirically-based papers and reflective essays that explore theoretical concepts and analytical reasoning to explain, critique and advance the ways in which we write about, produce, and consume theory.