Studying Caste in Business and Society

Éditeurs invités

• Arun Kumar, King's College London
• Johanna Mair, Hertie School
• Johanna Mair, Stanford University
• Kamini Gupta, King's College London
• Thomas Roulet, University of Cambridge

Synthèse

Caste is a hierarchical division of society into different rungs, where the social, cultural, and economic rights and opportunities available to individuals are inherited at birth and not determined by their abilities. Caste affects how economic activity is organized, participation in it, and its outcomes for individuals, organizations, and societies in significant ways. This special issue studies the role and influence of caste in business and society as a field.

Caste derives its legitimacy from sub-continental scriptures that organize society into four immutable varnas or classes, and comprises thousands of jatis or smaller, occupation-based communities that one is born into. As an endogamous system, it traps individuals within their caste group and status and ensures that those at the bottom have limited socioeconomic mobility. Although commonly associated with Hinduism, caste operates across religious lines including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism, and is widely observed in the South Asian sub-continent and further afield among the diaspora.

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Thèmes proposés

• Caste, labour, and discrimination - Caste and employment: recruitment, participation of workers, and involvement in the labour force; and its economic and social outcomes
• Caste and occupations: choice, dirty work, and stigma
• Caste, dignity, and occupational health and safety
• Caste, wage differential, and exploitation of labour
• Caste and the informal economy
• Discrimination and identity in the labour market
• Caste and global production - Global agri-business, peasantry, and caste
• Caste in global value chains
• Workers' rights, human rights, and caste: Governance and compliance codes around caste
• Accounting, banking, and finance industries, and caste
• Caste, globalization, and outsourcing
• Caste, migration, and diaspora
• Caste, business, and management - Discrimination and exclusion in the workplace
• Analysis of corporate governance, board practices, and regulation
• Global CEOs, caste, and identity
• Implications of caste diversity in businesses
• Caste, entrepreneurship, and technology - Dalit-Bahujan entrepreneurship
• Access to venture capital and investments
• Caste, homophily, and entrepreneurial networks
• Caste and technology: access and affordance
• Caste and innovation
• Role of businesses in tackling casteis m - Terminology and representation of caste
• Role and regulation of the private sector, including handling of grievances, informal and formal support infrastructure and mechanisms
• The role of leadership in tackling caste-based inequalities
• Role of reservations and other forms of affirmative action
• Collaboration with state and other public sector organisations
• Caste, CSR, and philanthropy
• Caste and social entrepreneurship
• How to create a caste diverse workforce
• Caste and privilege - Role of caste and caste-based networks in business activities (mercantile, money-lending castes, philanthropy, etc.)
• Privileges of caste for dominant caste managers and business leaders, and its social impact
• Caste and professions (banking, civil service, accounting and taxation, law etc.)
• Caste and theory - Theorizing caste in business and society: combine and develop existing perspectives, develop new theories
• Integrating and synthesizing different disciplinary perspectives of caste, drawing from fields beyond management
• Caste as a lens to rethink/revise theories relevant to business and society, as a field: Potential for generalizing caste lens beyond the caste system as a South Asian phenomenon
• Theorizing the distinctive features of caste as they relate to organizations and societies
• Theorizing organizations and organizing from a caste lens

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