Description
Organizations are the dominant social invention for generating resources and distributing them. Relational Inequalities develops a general sociological and organizational analysis of inequality, exploring the processes that generate inequalities in access to respect, resources, and rewards. Framing their analysis through a relational account of social and economic life, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt explain how resources are generated and distributed both within and between organizations. They show that inequalities are produced through generic processes that occur in all social relationships: categorization and their resulting status hierarchies, organizational resource pooling, exploitation, social closure, and claims-making. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, Tomaskovic-Devey and Avent-Holt focus on the workplace as the primary organization for generating inequality and provide a series of global goals to advance both a comparative organizational research model and to challenge troubling inequalities.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Generating InequalitiesRelational Inequality TheoryHow Else Do Social Scientists Think About Inequality?Status Attainment and Human Capital TheoriesConventional EconomicsHeterodox EconomicsInstitutional Political EconomyThinking RelationallyPlan of the BookChapter 2. Observing InequalitiesFrom There to Here?Comparative Organizational Research ExemplarsClass Inequality Regimes in Institutional ContextInequality Regimes in Interactional ContextComparisons of Ethnographic CasesChapter 3. Relational Inequality TheoryBuilding Blocks of Relational InequalityCategorizationOrganizationsGeneric Inequality Generating ProcessesExploitation and Social ClosureClaims-MakingContextual Variation in Generic ProcessesOrganizational ResourcesInstitutional VariationChapter 4. Organizational Inequality RegimesThe Ubiquity of Regime VariationGender Wage Gaps in Japan and the U.S.Immigrant Status and Skill Distinction in SwedenEducation, Gender and Immigrant Status and German Wage GapsElements of Inequality RegimesResource LevelsNational InstitutionsOrganizational Rules and PracticesLocal Organizational CulturesIntersectionalityChapter 5. ExploitationConceptualizing ExploitationObserving ExploitationComparing Firm Productivity to Wages Paid and Profits ExtractedRising Income InequalityExploitation across Categorical Distinctions in Linked Employer-Employee AnalysesHow does Exploitation Happen?Exploitation on the Shop Floor and in the Office CorridorTotal ExploitationExploitation in Institutional ContextChapter 6. Social ClosureConceptualizing Social ClosureObserving Closure ProcessesOrganizational Data Matched to EmployeesEthnographic accounts of closure processesIntegrating Science and Engineering FieldsGender and Engineering in the Age of Affirmative ActionChapter 7. Relational Claims MakingConceptualizing Claims MakingLegitimacy and Claims-MakingObserving Claims MakingClaims Making and the Labor ProcessNegotiating Work-Family RelationshipsClaims Making and WagesClaims Making and DignityNeoliberalism and the Legitimacy of ClaimsOrganized LaborFinancializationMobilizing Claims in Cultural ContextChapter 8. Organizational Surplus and Rising InequalitiesMarket PowerClosure, Exploitation, and Power in MarketsRelationality and Market Closure in Biotech InnovationInstitutionalizing Airline MonopoliesEmbedded Exchange and the Limits of ExploitationLinking Organizational Inequality and Resource PoolingFinancialization and Shifting ClaimsReconfiguring Organizational Boundaries to Monopolize SurplusChapter 9. Expanding the Moral CircleImplications for Social ScienceRIT and the Politics of EgalitarianismFrom Tribalism to UniversalismFrom Hierarchy to Organizational CitizenshipFrom Markets to DignityInstitutional and Organizational PoliticsDestabilize Status HierarchiesIncrease the Bargaining Power of the Least PowerfulReduce Organizational Resource Inequalities
