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Organizations remain a vital sociological topic, but organizational sociology, as a subfield, has evolved significantly since its inception. In this paper, I argue that organization sociology is becoming increasingly disconnected from organizational theory, as currently conceived. The focus of sociological research on organizations has become more empirically grounded in the study of social problems and how organizations contribute to them. Sociologists continue to see organizations as important actors in society that play a role in shaping social order and as contexts in which social processes play out. I propose two main sociological approaches for organizational research, which I describe as “organizations within society” and “society within organizations.” The first approach examines the role of organizations as building blocks of social structure and as social actors in their own right. The second approach treats organizations as platforms and locations of social interactions and the building of community. These approaches are somewhat disconnected from the sort of grand theorizing that characterizes much of organizational theory. I argue that the problem-oriented sociology of these two approaches offers a vital way for organizational scholars to expand and theoretically revitalize the field.

Sociologists have long thought of the integration of people in communities – social integration – and hierarchical social systems – systemic integration – as contradictory goals. What strategies allow organizations to reconcile social and systemic integration? We examine this question through 40 in-depth, longitudinal interviews with leaders of nonprofit organizations that engage in the dual pursuit of social and systemic integration. Two processes reveal how the internal structure of organizations often mirrors the ways in which organizations are embedded in their local environments. When organizations engage in loose demographic coupling, relegating those who “match” the community to the work of social integration, they produce internal inequalities and justify them by claiming community building as sacred work. When engaging in community anchoring, organizations challenge internal and external inequalities simultaneously, but this process comes with costs. Our findings contribute to a constructivist understanding of community, the mechanisms by which organizations produce inequalities, and a place-based conception of organizations as embedded in community.

Racial wealth inequality is a significant and growing issue in the USA. Improving the lagging rate of black new venture creation and successful entrepreneurship could help close the gap. The purpose of this paper is to focus needed attention on the financial challenges resulting from institutional and systemic discrimination that black entrepreneurs must deal with. Following this literature review, the paper makes recommendations and broad public policy suggestions.

This study conducts a literature review and discusses the myriad of reasons black entrepreneurs struggle with inadequate access to capital, with special emphasis on weaker entrepreneurial ecosystems that have resulted from systemic racism.

The paper sheds light on several factors which continue to directly impede successful black entrepreneurship including discrimination in lending, distrust in institutions, over-reliance on (inadequate) personal capital and declining black-owned banking and financial institutions, as well as community banking options in black communities.

The paper is conceptual and relies on prior literature. The proposed solutions are just a starting point and are certainly not meant to be all-inclusive or comprehensive. Much future research, particularly longitudinal research, is needed to further develop theory and specific public policies which can close the disparities this study has discussed. This study outlines several key areas in need of further quantitative and qualitative studies to better understand black entrepreneurship.

The US economy will increasingly suffer if the nearly 15% of population (and growing) made up of black communities continues to struggle. The broad-based policy solutions proposed in this paper would allow for increased access to capital that would address the long-term deficiencies and help to close the racial wealth gap.

Through this study’s broad-based potential solutions, entrepreneurial ecosystems can be strengthened to build the environment for successful new venture creation in black communities. The longer-term benefit would be increased tax revenues, improved communities with fewer individuals needing support through government assistance and greater social stability as economic gaps between various racial groups are closed.

Using a broader entrepreneurial ecosystem framework and a systemic racism theory lens, this study discusses the limited capital black entrepreneurs have access to. Following this literature review, this study offers broad-based policy solutions that can strengthen ecosystems and directly address the issues raised in the paper.

Using the Canadian Census of 2016, the present study examines the Black and White gap in compensating differentials for their commute to work.

The data are from the Canadian Census of 2016. The standard Mincerian wage regression, augmented by commute-related variables and their confounders, is estimated by OLS. The estimations use sample weights and heteroscedasticity robust standard errors.

In the standard Mincerian wage regressions, Black men are found to earn non-negligibly less than White men. No such gap is found among women. When the Mincerian wage equation is augmented by commute duration and its confounders, commute duration is revealed to positively predict wages of White men and negatively associate with wages of Black men. At the same time, in the specifications including commute duration and its confounders, the coefficient for the dummy variable identifying Black men is positive with a non-negligible size. The latter pattern indicates wage discrepancies among Black men by their commute duration. Again, no difference is found between Black and White women in these estimations.

The main caveat is that due to data limitations, causal estimates could not be produced.

For the Canadian working men, the uncovered patterns indicate both between and within race gaps in the impact of commuting on wages. Particularly, Black men seem to commute longer towards relatively lower paying jobs, while the opposite holds for their White counterparts. However, Black men who reside close to their work earn substantially more than both otherwise identical White men and Black men who live far away from their jobs. The implications for research and policy are discussed.

This is the first paper focused on commute compensating differentials by race using Canadian data.

Public health measures implemented early in the COVID-19 pandemic brought the idea of essential work into the public discourse, as the public reflected upon what types of work are essential for society to function, who performs that work, and how the labour of essential workers is rewarded. This chapter focusses on the rewards associated with essential work. The authors develop an intersectional lens on work that was officially deemed essential in 2020 to highlight longstanding patterns of devaluation among essential workers, including those undergirded by systemic racism in employment and labour law. The authors use quantitative data from the CPS-MORG to examine earnings differences between essential and non-essential workers and investigate whether the essential worker wage gap changed from month to month in 2020. The authors find that patterns of valuation among essential workers cannot be explained by human capital or other standard labour market characteristics. Rather, intersectional wage inequalities in 2020 reflect historical patterns that are highly durable and did not abate in the first year of the global pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the South African government has used accounting technologies to manage the pervasive issue of racial inequality.

Premised on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, we conducted a qualitative case study. Publicly available archival data are used to determine the extent to which accounting techniques have helped to shape policy responses to racial inequality.

We show that accounting techniques and calculations give visibility to the problems of government and help design a programme to solve racial inequality. The lived experiences and impacts of racism in the workplace have been problematised, turned into statistics, and used to rationalise the need for ongoing government intervention in solving the problem. These processes underpin the development of the scorecard system, which measures the contributions firms have made towards minimising racial inequalities.

This study augments the existing body of Foucauldian literature by illustrating how power dynamics can be counteracted. We show that in governmental processes, accounting can exhibit a dual role, and these roles are not always subordinate to the analysis of political realities. The case of B-BBEE reveals the unintended consequences of utilising accounting to control the conduct of individuals or groups.

This research examines the effect of team diversity on customer behavior (purchase likelihood) associated with sustainable luxury products and further considers the mediating role of customer skepticism and the moderating role of the growth mindset in these relationships.

Study 1 aims to confirm the direct effect of team diversity on purchase intention and the mediating effect of customer skepticism. Featuring a fictitious brand, Study 2 seeks to test the moderating effects of a growth mindset. This research recruits participants located in the USA who have shopping experiences with a luxury product.

The findings support the notion that team diversity can mitigate customers' skepticism while enhancing purchase likelihood. Moreover, this effect is stronger among those with a growth mindset. As such, the findings suggest that communicating the heterogeneous composition of team members can benefit sustainable luxury brands.

Underpinned by the signaling theory and incremental theory, this research examines the effects of team diversity on customer behavior (purchase likelihood) related to sustainable luxury products, as well as the role of customer skepticism (as a mediator) and a growth mindset (as a moderator) in these relationships. Thus, the findings broaden the current diversity research which has predominantly focused on team decision-making and performance.

The racialized gendered body in consumer culture invokes the construction of identities and representation of beauty through embodiment practices. As companies hone in on consumer racial marker distinctions to enhance uniqueness as otherness for profit, an analysis of hair products marketed for Black hair textures provides an opportunity to analyze how products use these at the intersection of race, gender, and beauty. This study uses constructivist grounded theory to analyze the product names and long descriptions for 124 shampoos marketed for Black hair textures on the websites of two major retailers to answer the following questions: What message does the discourse of shampoo product descriptions marketed to Black hair textures communicate about beauty? What message does the discourse of shampoo product descriptions marketed to Black hair textures communicate about Blackness? How does this discourse define the embodiment of Black beauty through hair? The results reveal that the racialized gendered body in consumer culture invokes the construction of identities and representations of beauty through embodiment practices. Through advertisements and product descriptions, beauty companies create ideal images of the lived experiences achieved through consuming beauty products. By constructing visual interpretations of racial signifiers through text, marketing strategies encourage the consumption of otherness, creating a racialized space for Blackness consumption. Combining the five senses with the descriptions of shampoo products marketed for Black hair textures helps us see how beauty embodiment practices reinforce racialized and gendered practices to subjugate the Black body.

This study examined differences related to gender and racial/ethnic identity among academic researchers participating in the National Science Foundation’s “Innovation-Corps” (NSF I-Corps) entrepreneurship training program. Drawing from prior research in the fields of technology entrepreneurship and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, this study addresses the goal of broadening participation in academic entrepreneurship.

Using ANOVA and MANOVA analyses, we tested for differences by gender and minoritized racial/ethnic identity for four variables considered pertinent to successful program outcomes: (1) prior entrepreneurial experience, (2) perceptions of instructional climate, (3) quality of project team interactions and (4) future entrepreneurial intention. The sample includes faculty (n = 434) and graduate students (n = 406) who completed pre- and post-course surveys related to a seven-week nationwide training program.

The findings show that group differences based on minoritized racial/ethnic identity compared with majority group identity were largely not evident. Previous research findings were replicated for only one variable, indicating that women report lower amounts of total prior entrepreneurial experience than men, but no gender differences were found for other study variables.

Our analyses respond to repeated calls for research in the fields of entrepreneurship and STEM education to simultaneously examine intersecting minoritized and/or under-represented social identities to inform recruitment and retention efforts. The unique and large I-Corps national dataset offered the statistical power to quantitatively test for differences between identity groups. We discuss the implications of the inconsistencies in our analyses with prior findings, such as the need to consider selection bias.