International team of scholars comprising IIMB faculty wins ABDC award for Caste Inequality research program

December 6, 2024

5 December, 2024, Bengaluru: A specialized research program on systemic caste-based inequalities in organizations and societies comprising of an international team of scholars that includes IIMB Strategy area faculty Prof. Prateek Raj, won the 2024 Australian Business Deans Council Network Award for Established, Scholarly Research.

The research program, comprising 20+ scholars across Australia, the UK, and India, has set a benchmark by integrating ethical considerations of caste into management discourse.

The program deployed three distinct approaches—theory development, empirical testing, and community building—and leveraged its analysis of organizational human capital data to design targeted interventions that address pressing social challenges. With community-building, an original impetus of the initiative has also been to advance and enrich comprehensive, interdisciplinary, empirical areas of enquiry. In addition, it has also supported the development of early-career, female, and underrepresented academics around the world.

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Having influenced both scholarship and policy, the findings have led to policy adoption by the Melbourne City Council and the Australian Human Rights Commission. Outcomes also include 16 articles published in top-tier journals, media pieces, and presentations to community stakeholders.

Among these papers is a PLOS One paper, co-authored by Prof. Prateek Raj, Prof. Hari Bapuji, University of Melbourne, and Thomas Roulet, University of Cambridge, titled, ‘It’s not who you know, but who you are: Explaining income gaps of stigmatized-caste business owners in India’. The study, which examines the income gap faced by Dalit business owners, was hailed as a “significant contribution to the discourse on economic inequality” this year by The Hindu.

Prof. Raj, who founded the Inclusive Markets Lab at IIMB, is also the Co-founder of ‘Action to Improve Representation’, an initiative that aims to improve representation and open doors for underrepresented South Asian scholars in management academia.

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