Editorial: Producing actionable knowledge about marginalized populations and communities: a challenge to editors and journals

• Date: 13 March 2024
• Pages: 300-312
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-03-2024-426
• Published date: 13 March 2024
• Author: Harry J. Van Buren,Charlotte Karam,Fida Afiouni

Editorial: Producing actionable

knowledge about marginalized

populations and communities:

a challenge to editors and journals

Introduction

In this opening essay to the special forum on equality, diversity and inclusion in marginalized

communities, we seek to address an important question: how can actionable knowledge on this

topic be produced, disseminated and acted upon? The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An

International Journal (“EDI”) journal description notes that it “offers a platform for critical

and rigorous exploration of equal opportunities concerns, including gender, ethnicity, class,

disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, as well as other nascent forms of inequalities in the

context of society, organisations and work.”This focus is vital, given the persistence of

inequity for which organizations, particularly businesses, bear responsibility. Scholars in this

field seek to make the world more just and believe that businesses (among other

organizations) must become more diverse and inclusive in order to achieve that goal. Many, if

not most, of us working in this domain seek to bring together scholarly rigor with activist zeal

in our writing and teaching. We are attracted to this field because we believe that there is an

ongoing crisis of inequality –within and across organizations and societies –that must be

addressed.

At the outset of our callfor papers, we sought to explore the nature of SMEresponsibilities

through the adoption of a feminist lens. From this perspective, many organizational scholars

often focus on the inequality regimes manifested within organizations by examining the

interlockingpractices and processes thatresult in continuing inequalitiesin organizational life

(Acker, 2006). Relatedly, and at the individual level of analysis, inequality regimes manifest

through day-to-day interactions andpersonal experiences within the organization (Berryand

Bell, 2012).Regimes of inequality alsoexist at higher levels of analysis,including those that are

embedded in the policies, practices and (in)formal norms that govern organizational culture

(Gupta, 2020). Further, and at a more macro level, inequality regimes manifest as broader

societal and economic factors, including factors embedded within regulatory environments,

societal norms and values and market conditions (Khilji, 2021).At this level of analysis, there

are importantand unexamined issuesacross markets and economies,including ones thatshape

the waywe examine and prioritizethe examination of the GlobalNorth versus the GlobalSouth,

or alternatively,of multinational corporations (MNCs)versus smaller and more local forms of

business.

Beyond these levelsof analysis tied in various ways to businesses,and in reflecting on our

experiencesas the editors of thisspecial issue, we also now wonderif existing editorial practices

and structuresof scholarlyknowledge productioncontribute to perpetuatingthese regimes and

if we, in our editorial roles, are equipped to truly respond to the inequality crisis through

bringing forth and shepherding truly liberatory scholarship. Thethree of us are experienced

journal editors and,as such, have responsibilities for determining whether scholarship meets

the quality and rigor requirements required for it to be published. As an important scholarly

EDI

43,2

300

Opening Essay, SpecialTopic Forum on “Facilitating Equality, Diversity,and Inclusion in Traditionally

Marginalized Communities: Unpacking the Nature of SME Responsibility through Feminist

Epistemology”.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 43 No. 2, 2024

pp. 300-312

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-03-2024-426