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ChangHwan Kim, assistant professor of sociology

Years at current job: Since fall 2008

Job duties: My primary duties as an assistant professor are teaching and research. I teach sociology of the economy and elements of statistics and data analysis. The 2008-09 academic year was my first at the University of Kansas. It was a very exciting year for me. The economic meltdown and presidential election in 2008 provided a rich set of topics to discuss in my courses and research.

What’s one thing that would surprise people about your work? Most people would be surprised about the magnitude of inequalities in our society in comparison to other societies as well as our society in the past. The current level of social polarization can only be matched with the situation in the late 1920s or early 1930s when the Great Depression hit American society hard. Since then, American society proudly showed the world how to change a polarized and divided society into socially and economically harmonized and integrated society. Until the mid 1970s, the socio-economic inequality in our society had been reduced, while economic prosperity had been at its peak.

Since the 1980s, however, the golden period of lower inequality and higher prosperity was gone, and we are now facing a dangerous level of socio-economic polarization that can potentially threaten social integration and economic development. The current situation is not what we have lived for in the last 70 years. Although there are differences between the current and the past social, economic, and political situation, there are also many similarities. My work reveals the uniqueness of the current socio-economic polarization.

Your research looks at how policy makers can decrease socioeconomic polarization. What is one of the most basic ways this can be approached from a policy standpoint? To develop policies designed to reduce undesirable socioeconomic polarization in our society, we should understand why it has been growing for the last 25 years. Two main factors that dominated the recent increase in inequality that policy makers should keep in their minds are the effects of social norm and education (technology). My own research, along with other prominent scholars’ works, consistently shows that within-demographic group inequality has grown faster than between-group inequality over time. Now we are more willing to accept disparity within a similar group than before, whatever the cause.

Social institutions such as unions or political parties that boosted equality within broader social contexts beyond their narrowly defined constituencies lost their power or passion and no substitutes emerged yet. In addition to social norm, education is another important cause of inequality and at the same time, it is a crucial tool in the fight against inequality. Globalization and technological advance are irreversible historical movements providing more opportunities for skilled workers. By successfully educating the broad masses of our society, we can make them better equipped to succeed in new global economic environment. The mission of KU in educational excellence is much more important for our future than ever before.

It is common to hear how race and ethnicity can cause problems or tension in the workplace. How can it impact the workplace positively? Yes, racial and ethnic diversity can cause tension in workplaces. However, diversity can be a crucial source of innovation in certain environments. How diversity affects workplace depends on the problems we are dealing with. If incremental improvement of routine jobs is important for service or product quality, diversity could hurt an organization. In this case, organizational homogeneity might be desirable. However, if an organization frequently faces unprecedented problems that need to be solved with new innovative ideas, diversity is likely to be beneficial for the organization. People with different backgrounds tend to come up with different solutions, while homogeneous groups usually think similarly. Since the new global economic environments are likely to require creative innovation rather than incremental improvement, racial and ethnic diversity is a necessary condition for innovative firms.