Disability as Constructed Difference: A Literature Review and Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies

Abstract

Disability theory and disabled people's voices have remained marginal in attempts to include a wider range of theoretical perspectives and voices in organization studies. This includes studies of the normative assumptions underpinning socially constructed categories of difference. This paper addresses this gap by reviewing the literature on social categories of difference, intersectional studies and studies across human resource management and diversity literatures. The argument here is that, while research has begun to move from an individualized discourse of disability, disability remains inadequately theorized as a constructed difference. The paper reviews the disability studies literature to identify the relevance of conceptualizing disability for work organizations, problematizes the concepts of disability and impairment and differentiates competing discourses of disability. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it offers an alternative social interpretation discourse which argues that disability is constructed as a negated difference through assumed ableism, which is a normative expectation of non‐disability. Second, it presents impairment effects as legitimate organizing requirements rather than individualized problems. The paper argues impairment effects, the effects of bodily and cognitive variation, have legitimate implications for how disabled people negotiate organizing contexts. Third, it develops a disability studies lens to advance theoretical approaches to the study of social categories of difference in the field of management and organization studies.

Thriving of employees with disabilities: The roles of job self‐efficacy, inclusion, and team‐learning climate

“…Job self‐efficacy is strengthened through positive performance feedback (Bandura, ). PWD are often regarded as incompetent (Fiske et al, ) and treated as a different group than people without disabilities (Mik‐Meyer, ; Williams & Mavin, ). They often face negative stereotyping and do not receive as much positive performance feedback or social persuasion as those without disabilities.…”

Gender and Disability in Male‐Dominated Occupations: A Social Relational Model

“…The educational literature can provide insights, where efforts are made to move beyond assumptions that a social ‘impairment’ resides within a child, to an understanding of a constructed difference between an assumed (and unexamined) set of ‘normal’ social behaviours and so called social ‘impairment’ (Molloy and Vasil, ). The adoption of a social relational model allows a move beyond individualistic psychological and pathologizing models of disability towards understandings of the construction of disability (Williams and Mavin, ) and emotional wellbeing of disabled people (Liddiard, ). Importantly, social relational models of disability do not ‘deny the category “disabled people”, but argue a classification must be historically situated, socially composite and seen as part of a multiple identity’ (Watson, , p. 513).…”

Othering, ableism and disability: A discursive analysis of co-workers’ construction of colleagues with visible impairments

“…Campbell, 2009;Galvin, 2006;Hall and Wilton, 2011;Schur et al, 2005;Williams and Mavin, 2012). Thus, to examine othering in relation to able-bodied norms, the present article from the outset has been particularly attentive to the role of the visible differences of employees with impairments.…”