At the core of research in organization studies lays the premise that organizations play a key role in generating and sustaining inequality in the workplace. For example, many studies show that women and racial minorities occupy lower quality jobs, through processes of screening, hiring, promotion, and termination. Recent empirical work has found that gender and racial disparities in the workplace remain even after the adoption of diversity programs, problem-solving team and job-training arrangements, merit-based pay practices, and other work policies. Other studies have also examined how structural factors internal to organizations, such as organizational size and tenure, hierarchical structure, and the use of job categories, affect ascriptive inequality. Ultimately, the distribution of resources, power and opportunities in society cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the impact of organizations and their practices on individual work outcomes.

The purpose of this sub-theme is to bring together a group of researchers who share a concern for advancing our knowledge about the impact of organizational practices on workplace inequality and diversity. In particular, our goal is to discuss innovative research that sheds new light on surprising theoretical mechanisms that explain how organizational practices affect key employment outcomes – such as assignment to jobs, wages, promotions, career advancement, training opportunities, etc. Because the nature of organizations and their boundaries are changing so rapidly, talking about “organizational practices” may not be the ideal way of thinking about these issues any more. Thus we also would like to explore the blurring of organizational boundaries, values, and procedures, the recent patterns of employee mobility, the increasing use of “market-driven” employment practices and the use of technology in the employment domain. We aim to examine how these developments shape new forms of economic and social inequality. This topic is not only relevant for the advancement of organizational theory and research, but it also has practical implications for employees, managers, communities, and society as a whole.

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