The caste system has received scant attention in organization studies, despite persisting over thousands of years, influencing the socioeconomic lives of over a billion people around the world and subjecting over 300 million people to severe socioeconomic discrimination. By overlooking caste, scholars risk conforming subaltern empirics to imperialist knowledge and miss the nuance and complexity that caste can bring to organization studies. We argue that the caste system is an institution that affects the workplace, yet it is difficult to dismantle because of its rooting in bodies and the sacred, which strips away agency. As an institution that is deeply embodied, caste has implications for institutional work, precarious work, and modern slavery. We conclude with a call for scholarly engagement with caste to study its implications in the pursuit of grand challenges and inclusive organizations.

Research on economic inequality has largely focused on understanding the relationship between organizations and inequality but has paid limited attention to the role of institutions in the creation and maintenance of inequality. In this article, we use insights from the caste system an institution that perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities and limits human functionsto elaborate on three elements of economic inequality: uneven dispersions in resource endowments, uneven access to productive resources and opportunities, and uneven rewards to resource contributions. We argue that economic inequalities persist because these three different elements of inequality feed from and reinforce each other. Our study underscores the potential of the caste lens to inform research on economic inequality as well as organizational theory and practice.

Research on economic inequality has largely focused on understanding the relationship between organizations and inequality but has paid limited attention to the role of institutions in the creation and maintenance of inequality. In this article, we use insights from the caste system an institution that perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities and limits human functionsto elaborate on three elements of economic inequality: uneven dispersions in resource endowments, uneven access to productive resources and opportunities, and uneven rewards to resource contributions. We argue that economic inequalities persist because these three different elements of inequality feed from and reinforce each other. Our study underscores the potential of the caste lens to inform research on economic inequality as well as organizational theory and practice.

Caste is an informal institution that influences socioeconomic action in many contexts. It is becoming increasingly evident that international business research, practice, and policy need to programmatically address caste. To facilitate this endeavor, we review the limited research in IB that has addressed caste, and theorize caste as a distinct informal institution by distinguishing it from other systems of stratification like race, class, and gender. In addition, we propose a parsimonious framework to highlight the implications of caste for Indian and non-Indian MNEs in their Indian and global operations. In doing this, we focus on implications with respect to the internal organization and inter-organizational relationships of MNEs, and consider how these implications might differ as based on the MNEs’ organizational forms. We then build on these implications to discuss how MNEs and other stakeholders of international business can address caste inequalities via policies related to human rights, anti-racism, and affirmative action. By bridging theory, practice, and policy, we pave the way for MNEs to address global inequalities that relate to caste.

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