In global supply chains, subpar working conditions are a critical issue affecting organizations, workers, civil society, and policymakers alike. Our objective is to evaluate the approaches to improve working conditions within global supply chains and their implications. Through a comprehensive review that integrates insights from various social science disciplines, we offer a fresh perspective on this challenge. We begin by identifying factors at multiple levels—supply chain, workplace, individual, and institutional—that contribute to poor working conditions, and explore how these factors, in some configuration, contribute to poor working conditions in different sample archetypes of global supply chains. We then present the factors driving lead organizations to improve working conditions in their global supply chains. Next, we dissect the transactional and relational approaches commonly implemented by lead organizations, assessing their mechanisms and effectiveness. Our review indicates that these approaches have limited success. As an alternative, we synthesize diverse insights to introduce a systemic approach grounded in three pivotal mechanisms: cooperation, recognition, and evolution. This approach aims to tackle the multifaceted factors affecting working conditions. To advance the systemic approach, we propose critical research questions that pave the way for future studies.

Even though management research on caste is growing, it is not yet on a clear trajectory to realize its vast potential due to varying terminology and framing of caste, the limited incorporation of directly relevant work from proximate disciplines, and the narrow and selective usage of the attributes of caste. To remove these obstacles, we review 259 scholarly works on caste (216 articles and 43 books and research reports) and develop an integrative framework to (a) clarify the contemporary manifestations of caste as being a graded hierarchy, an inherited membership, and a set of socially enforced practices; and (b) summarize the outcomes of caste at individual, occupational, organizational, and societal levels, while also consolidating the mechanisms through which caste influences these outcomes. Additionally, to position management scholarship on this topic for greater impact, we develop a research agenda that reflects contemporary interests in management research and the world at large about inclusion in organizations and societies. The caste system has practical significance for a large portion of the global population.