Organizational expulsion: How boundary work produces inequality in German airports

International audience; In this paper, we coin the term “organizational expulsion” to theorize a process of purposeful inequality creation by management through excluding groups of employees from the organization. Empirical observations at four case studies of restructuring in German airports show how management expelled an entire workforce segment through social practices of boundary work. This boundary work includes three sets of practices: (1) restricting options for internal representation, (2) justifying a re-evaluation of organizational members’ contributions, and (3) negotiating the consequences for remaining members. We discuss how organizational explanations of inequality production could benefit from embracing organizational expulsion as a more actor-oriented, political as well as context-sensitive concept. Further studies into organizational expulsion could look into other varieties of organizations and industry settings to deepen our understanding of when, how and with what consequences dominant groups in organizations shift the burden of organizational adaptation to vulnerable groups within organizations and beyond.