Laying the Foundation: Preparing the Field of Business and Society for Investigating the Relationship Between Business and Inequality
为商业与社会学者研究企业实践如何影响收入不平等提供起点，包括寻找现有实证研究、探讨理论构建方法，并举例说明社会科学理论如何揭示不平等背后的动态。
With the growth in income inequality now regarded as a crucial social issue, business and society scholars need to prepare themselves for the ambitious task of studying how corporate practices, intentionally or not, contribute to this trend. This article offers starting points for scholars wishing to explore this topic but lacking the necessary background for doing so. First, it offers suggestions as to finding the extant empirical work necessary for informed analysis. This is followed by an examination of alternate methods of theory construction relevant to this topic, which transcend the limitations of the experimental science model of theory building. It then provides an example of a social science theory that exemplifies how empirically informed open theory can illuminate the dynamics behind growing inequality. The article concludes by suggesting that progress in this area requires embracing the spirit of earlier approaches to business and society scholarship while abandoning some outdated assumptions.