Sunday, Oct. 17 is the United Nation’s annual “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty,” and AOM scholars note that income and wealth inequality is “one of the most pernicious threats to our society.”

“A mountain of evidence has demonstrated how income and wealth are increasingly concentrated among a small group of individuals. Also apparent is how opportunities for advancement, particularly within organizations, accrue on the basis of having—or rather not having—certain identifiable identity characteristics. In addition to the societal outcomes noted above, such systemic inequality has been described as a threat to social stability and democracy,” AOM Scholars John Amis of the University of Edinburgh, Shelly Brickson of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Patrick Haack of the University of Lausanne, and Morela Hernandez of the University of Michigan wrote in an Academy of Management Review editorial, “Taking Inequality Seriously.”

Learn more about inequality and poverty:

• 12 Challenges Faced by Employees from Poorer Families
• Entrepreneurship Removes Barriers for “Dirty Workers”
• Firms’ Labor Choices Can Help Close the Wage Gap
• Five Practices and Three Myths That Fuel Inequality (video)
• How India’s Poorest Slum Workers Find Meaning
• How Social Ladder Climbers Can Help Companies (video)
• Inequality Hurts Companies, Even as They Contribute to It (video)
• Refugees Present Opportunities, Not Problems, for Businesses (video | infographic)
• Reviving the “Forgotten History” of a Black Business School
• The Career Ladder’s Social Class Ceiling
• Slaveholders’ Journals Offer Ethics Lessons on Big Data