Corporatism and Inequality: The Race to the Bottom (Line)

Abstract

We search for an understanding of how the scholarly field of management tackles, copes with, or perhaps just conveniently avoids the subjects of race and wealth inequality in contemporary America. Doing so means confronting an inescapable paradox between the imposing and expanding power of corporate capitalism on the one hand, and the depressing and stubborn reality of poverty and economic inequality in American society on the other. The paper is structured into three major parts. First, we present a brief overview of poverty and corporatism, followed by a discussion of existing management scholarship on the intersection of poverty, race, and inequality; Second, we discuss underlying conceptual frameworks that create tensions in management scholarship between economic and social imperatives; Last, we conclude with a few speculative words about future directions for more and better management research attention to these issues.

Keywords: corporatism, inequality, management, poverty, ethics