Technology, Management, and Design for Social Justice: Critical Perspectives on Innovation, Equity, and Power

Technological and scientific innovation does not simply emerge; it is designed. From organizational systems and data infrastructures to platforms, policies, and everyday tools, design choices shape how power operates, whose knowledge counts, and who benefits from innovation. Technology, Management, and Design for Social Justice brings together global scholars and practitioners to critically examine how design, management, and technological systems reproduce inequality, and how they can be intentionally reimagined to advance equity, dignity, and planetary wellbeing.

Moving beyond views of technology as neutral or inevitable, this volume positions design as a moral and political practice embedded in institutions and governance. Through conceptual frameworks and global case studies spanning algorithmic management, climate-oriented innovation, indigenous digital infrastructures, youth innovation ecosystems, and welfare technologies, the chapters show how justice is designed into (or out of) sociotechnical systems.

Written for scholars, advanced students, and practitioners across management, design studies, science and technology studies, and social justice, this book offers critical tools for rethinking how innovation is shaped, and for whom.

Latha Poonamallee is Professor of Management and Socio-Tech Innovation in the School of Design Strategies at the New School Parsons School of Design.

Simy Joy is Academic Visitor at the University of East Anglia.

Joanne Scillitoe is Professor of Management and the Inaugural Paul Jennings Endowed Professor in Entrepreneurship at the California State University, Northridge, USA.

Anita Howard is an adjunct professor in the Department of Organizational Behavior at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, USA.

Akhil, S.G. is a Doctoral Candidate in Management, Design & Innovation at Case Western Reserve University, USA.