Abstract
This structured literature review explores disability issues in human resource development (HRD) to ascertain what research exists and suggest future research. This review identifies the work related to disability issues published in the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) proceedings and the four journals. HRD scholarship, germane to our discussion of disability, has focused on organizational entry barriers, organizational post-entry barriers, career development (CD) and advancement, workplace training for disability inclusiveness, workplace training for disabled employees, and harassment, discrimination, and allegations of discharge-related discrimination.
In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) approximated 15% of the total global population has some variant(s) or combination(s) of disability, affecting an estimable one billion lives (WHO, 2015). Of this, roughly 110 million to 190 million adults with disabilities grapple with challenges related to day-to-day functioning, for example, executing essential health building activities, eating, walking, and bathing (WHO, 2015). Worldwide, the proportion of people with disabilities (PWD) who are of working age (16-64) is about 785 million, equivalent to 80% of all PWD (International Labour Organization, 2016). On the whole, international governments have made remedial strides toward improving the employment predicament of PWD.
Within the United States, PWD encounter hardships locating and securing suitable employment, and maintaining a job (Kulkarni, 2012a). This “hardship” originates part and parcel from the disablist attitudes employers hold of the low demonstrable worth of the disabled in workplaces (Nota, Santilli, Ginevra, & Soresi, 2014; Stone & Colella, 1996). As of March 2016, the non-institutionalized American civilian population 16 through 64, with one or more disability(s) neared 30 million, with only 5.9 million comprising the labor force (those available to work, actively seeking work, or unemployed; U.S. Department of Labour, 2016). The residual unemployment of Americans with disabilities is estimated at 24 million (U.S. Department of Labour, 2016) with 1.17 million (roughly 12%) American veterans aged 18 to 64 who have one or more disability (Annual Disability Statistics Compendium, 2014). Adults with disabilities remain today an underutilized segment of the available labor pool (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014).
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states that a person with a disability is one who has a physical or mental impairment that “substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual; a record of such an impairment; or being regarded as having such an impairment” (Section 12102). Definitions are important (Rocco & Delgado, 2011). For example, the dated designation of being “handicapped” has since evolved to “people with disabilities” from “disabled people” (Rocco & Delgado, 2011). A critique of the language has questioned the use of “person with a disability,” as we typically do not say “person with a gender or a race” (Rocco & Delgado, 2011, p. 8). This “people first language” connotes disability as something sundered “from personhood or humanity . . . [treating] disability as passive or [as] an afterthought” (Withers, 2012, p. 114). This review will use “people with a disability” and “disabled people” interchangeably for these reasons: First, as the latter evokes negative connotations, an effort is made to appease some readers’ sense of political correctness, and second, one of two authors has a permanent psychiatrized illness (Bipolar Disorder Type II), and subscribes to the belief that this “with a disability” label is arbitrarily imposed not only as a “tactic to retain power and social control” but also to gain propriety over his identity, that has henceforth made him disabled (Withers, 2012, p. 119).
Two issues emerged pertinent to defining disability within the context of diversity in human resource development (HRD). The first, that disability is oft omitted from diversity definitions (Rocco, 1998), and the second, when disability is defined as a diversity factor, research includes physical, but excludes mental and cognitive disabilities (Kormanik & Nwaoma, 2014; McGuire, 2014; Qin, Muenjohn, & Chhetri, 2014). Disability is occasionally “glossed over if mentioned at all in conversations about diversity and multiculturalism” (Rocco, 1998, p. 7). An article by Bierema (2010) which is critical of HRD’s woeful omission of issues of diversity in the workplace and post-secondary settings illustrates the issue of omission. Bierema surveyed more than 600 conference proceeding papers, using the search terms race, diversity, gender, homosexuality, women, and power. Bierema diatribes against HRD’s lack of commitment to diversity issues, which in turn has contradicted HRD’s “diversity rhetoric” and has instead essentially denied diversity as a legitimate concern of the field (Bierema, 2010, p. 2359). The humanistic theories espoused by HRD on diversity are in fact incongruous with the application of such theories in practice (Bierema, 2010). However, amid her arguing for greater diversity, Bierema’s research reproduces resistance to disability as a diversity factor by ignoring “disability,” cognitive, physical, and mental as terms in her search. Kormanik and Nwaoma (2014) reference six primary dimensions of diversity: age, gender, ethnicity, physical qualities/abilities, race, and sexual orientation. Secondary dimensions include (but are not limited to) educational standing, religious beliefs, parental status, income level, and work experience. Their definition denies the existence of invisible disabilities, cognitive and mental disabilities, as primary dimensions. Strong proponents insist on the addition of disability as a factor in the race–class–gender triad (Davis, 2001), which they view as essential for theorizing disability as a community issue (Rocco, 2002).
Problem Statement
Disability is an area that is sidestepped in the HRD literature. This literature discusses other identity markers such as race and gender but never disability. HRD as a field has given little consideration to disability research and in creating a fructifying dialogue about disability (Byrd, 2009; Rocco, Bowman, & Bryant, 2014). Furthermore, disability is examined from a medical, economic, or vocational perspective, yet “little work from a critical perspective . . . has been published in adult education literature outside of conference proceedings” (Rocco & Fornes, 2010, p. 387). The purpose of this article is to analyze the available literature published in Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) journals and conference proceedings to ascertain what work exists on disability and on disability-related issues. To accomplish this aim, the literature was searched with the following questions in mind: What types of articles were published (e.g., literature reviews, conceptual or empirical studies), what research methods were used in empirical studies, what topics were covered (e.g., training for disability inclusiveness), and to what degree does the literature begin to address the concerns of PWD? Furthermore, does the existing scholarship on HRD and disability furnish a sufficient framework for future research? The findings will be used to present a research agenda for HRD scholars around the intersection of disability and HRD.
Models of Disablement and Disability Oppression: A Conceptual Framework
Long-standing traditions of disablism, against people labeled disabled, have divested them of normative citizenship and employment. Disablism is defined as “discriminatory, oppressive or abusive behaviour arising from the belief that disabled people are inferior to others” (Miller, Parker, & Gillinson, 2004, p. 9). The “disabled” label ascribed to undesired bodies and minds marginalizes their bearers. The “nondisabled” draw strength from this marginalization, inclined to preserve their domination over PWD (Withers, 2012). The focus on able-bodied/mindedness as the unquestioned norm goes untroubled, more so, becoming a springboard for disablism (Rocco et al., 2014). From a citizenship standpoint, the disabled are declassed (Rocco & Delgado, 2011), rendered “unequal citizenship” (Devlin & Pothier, 2006, p. 1), and denied “access to meaningful work and the full spectrum of society” (Rocco & Delgado, 2011, p. 8). The label, disabled, has tarred people with disabilities as “un(der) productive” (Withers, 2015, p. 115), not reliable, costly employees who need carecreating a state of “economic subordination” which diminishes their worth as workers (Rocco et al., 2014, p. 6).
Disability oppression occurs when the disabled are routinely subjected to rituals of political, cultural, or social degradation because of their group affiliation (Charlton, 1998). Although disability oppression is not collectively experienced, PWD “are oppressed and resist this oppression individually and . . . in ways that are generalizable” (p. 5). The comprehensive theory of disability oppression posits four recurrent sources of disability oppression: (a) political economy, (b) culture(s) and belief systems, (c) (false) consciousness and alienation, and (d) power and ideology (Charlton, 1998).
The political economy of disability includes privation and powerlessness as cornerstones of the helplessness endured by PWD (Charlton, 1998). Political economy is dictated by how, where, and to what extent the disabled “are incorporated into a world system dominated by the few that control the means of production and force” (Charlton, 1998, p. 23). Given that access to the political economy is minimal, PWD experience poverty, and unemployment and underemployment disproportionately. In addition, the medical–industrial complex (health care and nursing homes) exists that capitalizes on the oppression of PWD while pretending to serve them (Rocco & Delgado, 2011). Culture and belief systems sustain the view of the disabled as human aberrations to an imagined worldview of human normalcy. Culture is not immutable. It is, however, conditioned by politics, economics, history, and institutions (Rocco & Fornes, 2010). Ideas and beliefs that are informed by normative cultures can be seen as crude tokens of a world that exculpates those who give strength to dualities such as normality/abnormality or domination/subordination. The third aspect of disability oppression is when disabled people internalize a false notion of self, an illusory consciousness that they are “less normal, less capable than others” (Charlton, 1998, p. 27). Through this process, a false consciousness and alienation manifests that provokes splits within groups and isolates PWD from society and from each other. This alienation becomes self-destructive when it obscures PWD from consciously knowing their true selves, needs, and capabilities, and from realizing the options they have (Rocco & Delgado, 2011). False consciousness and alienation conceals the genesis of their oppression. An “authentic consciousness” comes into being as the disabled become “critically [self-]aware of the social conditions, opportunities, and oppressive forces that exist” (Rocco & Fornes, 2010, p. 7). Power and ideology control the way PWD experience the world through social, economic, and political systems (Rocco & Fornes, 2010). Dominant groups use power and wield an “us” versus “them” ideology to buttress their inviolable positions to decide events and outcomes and control resources (Rocco & Delgado, 2011). Withers (2012) argued that “[t]he construction of disability is an essential tool for how people with power work to maintain that power” (p. 11).
Disability studies, an emergent inter- and multidisciplinary field, adopts a socio-political lens that examines disability as a socially constructed phenomenon (Oliver, 1996). Social constructions concern threads of discourses we as a society engage in that ascribes, upholds, and makes natural meaning(s) we bind to peoples’ identities. Disablist societies install “regimes of truth,” that is, a discourse accepted and made to function as true, that twines unsavory labels and understandings of the disabled with disabled identities (Foucault, 1980; Goodley, 2011). “Regimes of truth” function through the privileging of disablist knowledge and marginalize divergent and competing truths; truths, to Foucault, are the “most important vehicles and expressions of power; power is exercised through the production and dissemination of truth” (Hunt & Wickham, 1994, p. 11). Through the imposition of the medical paradigm, disabled citizens are stripped of power and expression by actors in the employ of the medical–industrial complex (Withers, 2012). Disability studies restores some semblance of power to disabled peoples by creating anti-oppressive avenues to share “subjugated knowledge,” that is their experiences and voices, to contest with “regimes of truth.”
Disability is regarded “as a social construction used as an oppressive tool to penalize and stigmatize those [disabled] who deviate from the (arbitrary) norm” (Withers, 2012, p. 98). Disability studies emerged to challenge the dominant medical perspective that consigns the status of problem to be solved on the person, and treats disability as if it is individualized within the person. The disabled are blithely assumed as deviants to be corrected through intervention and accommodation (Goffman, 1963; Williams-Whitt & Taras, 2010). This attitude was challenged by the social model or paradigm. The social model is premised on the belief that the disabled do not pose the problem, but instead the problem is caused by a disablist society that creates the inhospitable social, economic, and cultural environs that the person with a disability finds herself or himself in (Aliaga, 2000; Rocco, 2002). Inaccessible environments nurture stigma (Rocco, 2002); stigma and antagonism are often increased when environments are adapted to “meet the needs of people who do not fit the physical and mental profile of ‘normal’” (Byrd, 2014, p. 349). The attitude of special treatment for people who do not fit the norm is disabling and discriminating.
The social model perceives impairments as the functional physical or mental limitations experienced by people (Bickenbach, 2012). Functional limitations are defined as “the restrictions that impairments set on the individual’s ability to perform the tasks and obligations of his or her usual roles and normal daily activities” (Altman, 2001, p. 106). The social model dichotomizes “disability” from “impairment” and rigidly interprets disability as the oppression layered on top of or affixed to impairments (Withers, 2012). It is because of this impairment/disability distinction that the social model, can at times, falls into the same trap of perpetuating the oppression of disabled people (Withers, 2012). First, the social perspective fails to impute social meaning to impairments. Nevertheless, impairments are socially constructed by disablists in the same roundabout manner that disability is (Lang, 2007; Withers, 2012). As the emphasis is removed from disabled people’s personal limitations, it makes little allowance for people to express any physical and emotional suffering they may have with their bodies (Lang, 2007; Withers, 2012). The shrewd separation or disentangling of impairment and disability “has compartmentalized bodily experience from social experience - pain from politics” (Lang, 2007, p. 20). Second, the social model was created in the 1970s by activists with physical disabilities for people with physical disabilities (Withers, 2015), not accounting for other groups of people with cognitive or psychiatrized disabilities; “the model was simply expanded to these groups rather than created with them” and for them (Withers, 2015, p. 90). More so, there is an absence of consideration for the multiplicity of other oppressive identities and how they intersect with disability within this paradigm.
The radical model of disability, borne with cognitive, psychiatric, and physical disabilities in mind, is promulgated here as an alternative model for theorizing disability (Withers, 2015). Four components constitute this model: First, this model posits, unlike that of the social model, that there is no sheer biological basis for impairment(s) and/or disability(s). The radical model repudiates the impairment/disability dichotomy, because both impairment(s) and disability(s) are social constructs. Second, disability “is not actually about those of us who are disabled; it is about those with the power to call us disabled” (Withers, 2012, p. 107). Devlin and Pothier (2006) contemplate disability as a “question of politics and power (lessness), power over, and power to” (p. 44). Third, disability interlocks “with and overlaps” with other identities (Withers, 2012, p. 98). Last, radical access “goes beyond” breaching physically inaccessible spaces that exclude “certain kinds of people with certain kinds of minds and/or bodies” (Withers, 2012, p. 118), but progresses toward fostering “non-oppressive spaces” inclusive to all requiring economic, social, cultural, and intellectual access (Withers, 2015, p. 117). Radical access acknowledges the existence of societal and systemic barriers and strives to “not only [ensure the] presence of those who have been left out, but also their comfort, participation and leadership” (Withers, 2012, p. 118).
Research Design
This article is concerned with all cognitive, mental, and physical disabilities, and it acknowledges that everyday discourses on disability in many cases conflate varying disabilities under the single umbrella term disability. This echoes the reality that much of the government legislation and rhetoric on improving the situation for PWD speaks in broad terms. Where possible, we will attempt to distinguish one form of disability from another. The structure and logic of this review was modeled upon Schmidt, Githens, Rocco, and Kormanik’s (2012) literature review on the intersection of sexual minority issues in HRD and adult education.
Identifying Literature in HRD
The search of the HRD literature begins in 1990, the same year the inaugural issue of Human Resource Development Quarterly (HRDQ) was released. The other AHRD publications were searched from their inaugural issue to March 2016: Advances in Developing Human Resources (ADHR; first issue 1999), Human Resource Development Review (HRDR; first issue 2001), and Human Resource Development International (HRDI; first issue 1998). The proceedings from the annual AHRD Conference held in the Americas were searched from the first year they were made available on the webpage, 1997 to 2016. Research roundtables, innovation sessions, and food and thought sessions were excluded from proceedings even though some were relevant such as “Disclosing ‘Deviance’ in the Workplace: LGBT, BDSM, Convicts, and the Disabled” (Collins, Meeker, Whitehead, & Rocco, 2012).
To qualify for inclusion in this review, the intersection of disability and the workplace had to be the major, rather than a peripheral focus, of the paper. The search terms were organized in two segments. First, abstracts and titles were searched for key words: disabilities, disability, disabled, disorders, impairments, and ableism/disablism. Next, to broaden the search, secondary search terms were used either independently or combined to ferret out otherwise obscured articles: independently (anxiety, depression, bipolar, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, mental retardation (MR), Asperger’s, autism, dysthymia, diabetes, illness, and substance abuse), and combined (mental/physical/cognitive disabilities, affective disorders, anxiety disorders, and childhood conditions). If any of the forenamed conditions informed the “problem statement,” “implications,” “recommendations,” or “proposed research agenda” of the paper, it was included. Articles that treated disability simply as a dimension of diversity, or within a definition thereof, were omitted. Papers were omitted if any of the forenamed disorders/disabilities/or conditions were mentioned only in a papers’ “background to the problem,” such as academically underprepared adults with disabilities (Torraco & Dirkx, 2008), and/or “literature review,” such as viewing anxiety and depression as symptoms of workplace incivility (Estes & Wang, 2008).
The Sample
Seventeen conference papers mentioned disability issues in the AHRD conference proceedings from 1999 to 2016. In HRDR, three articles were identified with the key words “disabilities,” “disabled,” or “disability” which were authored or co-authored by Kulkarni and her colleagues. The articles covered career advancement and social networks of PWD (Kulkarni, 2012b), help-seeking behaviors (Kulkarni, 2012a), and obstacles to success in the workplace (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014). In HRDQ, four articles were identified. The articles dealt with improving outcomes for employees with intellectual impairments/disabilities/MR (Fornes, Rocco, & Rosenberg, 2008), social barriers perceived by employees with disabilities when reentering an organization (Boyle, 1997), employment provisions of the ADA and implications for HRD (Freeburg, 1994), and career development (CD) for recovered alcoholics (Gedro, Mercer, & Iodice, 2012). In HRDI, two articles were found on the prejudices of human resource students as future practitioners and their ambivalence toward the employment of disabled workers (Hidegh & Csillag, 2013), and on the mentoring of disabled employees (McDowall-Long, 2004). In ADHR, one issue contained five articles that covered allegations of discharge-related discrimination (Hurley, 2010; Rumrill, Fitzgerald, & McMahon, 2010) and discharge-related discrimination against employees with disabilities (Rumrill & Fitzgerald, 2010), and Roessler, Hurley, and McMahon (2010) and Hurley (2010) compared allegations and resolutions of discharge and constructive discharge discrimination with non-discharge discrimination. A fifth article discussed disability as a diversity factor (Nafukho, Roessler, & Kacirek, 2010).
Five of the 15 articles presented in the four HRD journals were quantitative, and two were qualitative. Seven articles were either conceptual or integrative literature reviews, and two were position papers. In the 2010 issue on disability and diversity in ADHR, the opening article by Nafukho, Roessler, and Kacirek (2010) was conceptual, and the remaining four articles were quantitative and explored disability issues in respect to discharge. Of the seventeen conference proceedings published by the AHRD, there were three conceptual papers, two integrative literature reviews, two position papers, four qualitative studies, five quantitative studies, and one mixed methods study (see Table 1).
HRD Publications and Research Methods Used in Disability-Related Papers.
Note. AHRD = Academy of Human Resource Development; HRD = Human Resource Development; HRDR = Human Resource Development Review; HRDQ = Human Resource Development Quarterly; HRDI = Human Resource Development International; ADHR = Advances in Developing Human Resources.
Analysis of Articles
After the papers in the sample were read, they were read a second time so as to construct précis’, an objective summarization of each papers’ methodological structure and main themes and findings as they related to disability. From the précis created, we began “inductively develop[ing] [a] categorization scheme” (Schmidt et al., 2012, p. 332). Each paper was reread for a third time, first, to confirm the verity of its appropriate delineation to the correct theme, and second, to discern whether the papers could lend secondary support to additional themes.
The categories are organizational entry barriers, organizational post-entry barriers, CD and advancement, workplace training for disability inclusiveness, workplace training for disabled employees, and harassment, discrimination, and allegations of discharge-related discrimination (see Table 2). Many publications crosscut multiple categories. Table 2 shows each paper that was a primary or secondary influence on a category. For example, Kulkarni (2012a) had a secondary influence on the category, organizational barriers to entry, and a primary influence on the category, organizational post-entry barriers.
Categories.
Note. CD = Career Development.
Findings and Discussion: Seeing Disability in HRD Literature
This section is organized around the categories that emerged from the analysis: organizational entry barriers, organizational post-entry barriers, CD and advancement, workplace training for disability inclusiveness, workplace training for disabled employees, and harassment, discrimination, and allegations of discharge-related discrimination. Table 2 provides a visual representation of the papers that primarily influenced the development of a category.
Organizational Entry Barriers
Organizational entry barriers deny, disadvantage, and unduly preclude oppressed groups from accessing employment based on sociological markers irrespective of the nature of the work or the person’s skill set (Government of Manitoba, 2016). PWD face more barriers to accessing employment than other minority groups (Aliaga, 2000). Subtle organizational resistance toward hiring disabled people is evident during the selection and recruitment stage of employment (Hidegh & Csillag, 2013). This organizational resistance should be met by strategies that scrutinize job descriptions, determine recruitment and hiring best practices, and weed out conventions that limit the employment prospects of candidates with disabilities (Freeburg, 1994; Hidegh & Csillag, 2013; Nafukho, Roessler, & Kacirek, 2010).
Recurring barriers that impede disabled people from accessing employing organizations are attitudinal, institutional, and self-created barriers (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014). Attitudinal barriers comprise personal prejudices, biases, or stigmatized views that create hurdles for disabled candidates. In Kulkarni and Lengnick-Hall’s (2014) field study, employers indicated that individual prejudices factored in their decision against hiring disabled people. Recalcitrant employers expressed doubts about the capabilities of disabled workers, questioned productivity, and had less confidence in their performance potential. The respondents suspected that hiring disabled workers would estrange nondisabled workers from the workplace, a finding that resonated with Rocco (1999). Institutional barriers are informed, in part, by economic theory. Some employers prejudge the productivity of disabled candidates and value them as high risk. Others adopt an equal opportunity posture to reap the benefits from government incentives to hire PWD, and yet, still waver in their commitment to phase in disability-centered practices (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014). Institutional barriers can include applicant testing and assessment of skills that are not required of the job or are not fully accessible by PWD (Kulkarni, 2012a). Self-created barriers transpire when PWD are the source of their own access problems (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014). When self-questioning leads to self-doubt about abilities and employability, PWD can sabotage their own employment prospects by circumscribing job searches (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014). Self-created barriers include an unrealistic expectancy of what tasks PWD can or cannot perform (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014).
Rocco (2001) found little research on disability and self-disclosure in employment. Disclosure, and the decision to disclose, becomes a self-styled barrier to employment when candidates withhold information of their disability. They can become visibly fraught with anxiety and guilt, causing them to jeopardize the interview. People with visible and invisible disabilities approached disclosure and their employment interview differently (Rocco, 1999). Both (in)visible cohorts adopted techniques to “avoid or lessen the impact of employer discrimination during the selection interview” (Rocco, 1999, p. 261). Applicants with visible disabilities disclosed them in the screening interview “to alleviate it as an objection” (Rocco, 1999, p. 256), establish permissible questions, and uncover any covert discrimination. Many of those with invisible disabilities staved off disclosure until they were securely employed. Self-disclosing in the interview, they felt, would remove them from consideration. Participants with invisible disabilities recalled losing a job due to their disability by unlawful termination, being denied accommodations, and/or having to withdraw from the workplace to deal with disability-related depression (Rocco, 1999).
To counter barriers to employment, some disabled Americans participate in sponsored job training through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA; Moore & Gorman, 2007), though the WIA does not guarantee employment. Disabled participants who were exiting job training under the WIA, had a lower likelihood of procuring employment than those without disabilities (Moore & Gorman, 2007). Low-income disabled workers with familial responsibilities fared worse gaining employment. Regardless of its nature or severity, the disability had an inhibitory effect on employment (Alfred & Martin, 2002). “Normal” people generally look down on the disabled as less intelligent and hardworking (Lengnick-Hall, Gaunt, & Kulkarni, 2008), and less productive (Harcourt, Lam, & Harcourt, 2005) regardless of the disability. Therefore, from an economic optimization perspective, PWD remain undesirable candidates for employment (Harcourt et al., 2005).
Organizational Post-Entry Barriers
Organizational post-entry barriers exist for PWD in terms of pay and benefit equity, training access and career progression, and supervisors’ and peers’ attitudes. These barriers relegate PWD to a second-class status at work. Meager job training continues to be disabled employees’ primary barrier to job growth (Augustin, 2011). Disabled employees take a “double hit,” endure wage disparities performing the same work as nondisabled workers (Williams-Whitt & Taras, 2010), and are less likely to receive benefits (Fevre, Robinson, Lewis, & Jones, 2013; Schur, Kruse, Blasi, & Blanck, 2009). To receive accommodations, employees must disclose (Rocco, 2000). If accommodation is denied, the employee will have difficulty completing the job tasks and have limited opportunities for advancement and job retention (Aliaga, 2000). Attitudes of supervisors and peers can create discomfiture (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014). Disabled employees who sense coworkers mounting prejudices, do little to dispel doubts or dispute falsehoods about their abilities and competencies: “they come to accept and expect unfair treatment” (Kulkarni, 2012b, p. 87).
Boyle (1997) investigated the experiences of employees with physical disabilities and their success in organizations. He found four categories of barriers to success. First was a “negative social image” (p. 262) that caused those with disabilities to shirk from interacting with those without disabilities. Second, the rehabilitation system controlled access to jobs and paid little attention to the career aspirations of clients. Third, work was designed for people without disabilities and a lack of will to imagine work in other ways prevented disabled people from securing these jobs. Fourth, employers conducted extensive public relations campaigns to create an image of responsiveness to the disabled community which did not exist in the workplace.
Career Development and Advancement
CD is the structured “activities or processes that advance employees within an organization and result in their optimal utilization” (Fornes, 2008, p. 45).CD for disabled employees should hold their skills, interests, values, and their career aspirations together in a satisfying equipoise (Fornes, 2008). After the trials and tribulations of attaining employment, disabled employees continue to encounter barriers to their career progression (Aliaga, 2000; Kulkarni, 2012b). CD can mitigate barriers experienced by disabled workers (Kulkarni, 2012a; Wentling & Palma-Rivas, 1998). HRD can mitigate barriers to CD by structuring socially inclusive climates and proffering focused training (Kulkarni, 2012a).
Macro social network characteristics such as cohesiveness, homophily, density, and multiplexity enable or constrain the career trajectories of disabled employees (Kulkarni, 2012b). Homophily is defined as the degree of similitude “based on identity or organizational group affiliations” (Kulkarni, 2012a, p. 146). Disabled employees self-select and sequester themselves out of multiplex and dense non-minority social networks (Kulkarni, 2012b). Disabled employees prefer to leverage homophilic ties and to confide in similar others (or “allies”) for advice and social support (Kulkarni, 2012b; Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014; McDowall-Long, 2004). At the same time, if disabled employees become overly reliant (dependent) on homophily, it may push them further to the social fringes of nondisabled networks, thereby culminating in suboptimal career advancement and growth. Kulkarni’s (2012b) research theorizes social network characteristicsare an important influence on the careers of those with physical disabilities. Much of her argument(s) draws breath from “network research specific to minorities” and has a tendency to pigeonhole disabled experiences into a broader discourse of minority experiences (Kulkarni, 2012b, p. 141). Her research could be improved upon by considering disabled employees’ characterological makeup, for example, personality, and their position within a social network and by considering the issues from the perspective of the disabled.
Personalized training and development can enhance career satisfaction and outcomes for disabled employees (Fornes, 2006, 2008). Self-determination can bolster intellectually disabled employees’ knowledge about “structural relationships among occupations” and better prepare them for planning their own careers (Fornes, 2006, p. 336, 2008). Career planning for employees with intellectual challenges should center on career goal setting, self-appraisal, and exploration (Fornes, 2008). Careers are harmed when PWD leave employment to deal with their disability, for example, battered women with PTSD symptoms (Collins, 2011). HRD can intercede on behalf of PWD organizational reentry through training programs designed to renew self-confidence (Collins, 2011) and sharpen skills.
Gedro (2014), Gedro and Iodice (2011), and Gedro et al. (2012) investigated how the intersectionality of mental disability (e.g., alcohol use/abuse disorder or alcohol recovery), sexuality (Gedro, 2009), and gender cohabitate as distinct, yet dependent, identities that limit career advancement. Gedro and Iodice opined that “there is little to no indication that recovered alcoholics are considered a subset of the disabled who warrant particular considerations for career development” (p. 131). The recovered alcoholic, through trial and error, negotiates a sober identity and juggles fears of self-disclosure, and in so doing, risks it becoming a career liability (Gedro et al., 2012). Lesbian women disproportionately account for higher rates of alcoholism than their heterosexual counterparts. Lesbian alcoholics mediate multiple stigmas (Gedro, 2009, 2014; Gedro et al., 2012) facing “a paradigm of unique career considerations” (Gedro, 2009, p. 59). HRD can build organizational awareness, sensitivity, and literacy around the CD barriers that recovered alcoholics weather (Gedro & Iodice, 2011).
Mentoring research in HRD has ignored PWD (Young, Cady, & Foxon, 2006). Mentorship provision has wholly been to the advantage of nondisabled employees (Kulkarni, 2012b). Mentoring can assist with career progression for protégés who have otherwise been isolated due to their disability status (McDowall-Long, 2004). McDowall-Long (2004) and Kulkarni (2012a) recommend the identification and proper match-fit of the mentor and mentee with a disability. An inclusionary focus is laid, by twining mentoring and CD to create conditions for interdependence. Interdependence places the disabled employee at ease seeking help (Kulkarni, 2012a). The mentor inspires the confidence within his or her protégé, to comfortably and independently navigate the organization’s social landscape (Kulkarni, 2012a). With the passage of time, mentorships do expire. Mentors can, however, continue to champion their mentee’s “suitability for promotions or lateral job changes” (McDowall-Long, 2004, p. 521).
Workplace Training for Disability Inclusiveness
Diversity training is regarded as “the methods and techniques for developing greater awareness and sensitivity of diverse issues in the workplace with the aim of creating a more harmonious work environment” (Byrd, 2009, p. 203). A survey of human resource managers found that 86.7% of respondents utilized diversity training when interviewing candidates with disabilities (Aliaga, 2000). An impressive 90% of responding organizations have programs in place to train human resource team members on implementing the provisions of the ADA. In comparison to managers, “knowledge and training about disability issues seem to be concentrated, still, in the realms of human resource staff” (Aliaga, 2000, p. 127).
HRD recognizes diversity as a topic of training (Byrd, 2009; Ross-Gordon & Brooks, 2004). Yet, HRD has failed to proffer training programs that include the experience of disability (Byrd, 2009; Ross-Gordon & Brooks, 2004). Disability-diversity training should take into account the active and diverse voices within the disability community (Boyle, 1997; Rocco, 1999). Disability-diversity training should address accommodations and bias reduction strategies through recruitment, selection, and induction into the organization, extending to job performance appraisals and evaluations, training, and CD (Aliaga, 2000; Kulkarni, 2012a; Rocco, 1999).
Diversity training that includes information on disability can improve acceptance, decrease prejudice, alter paradigms, and reduce toxic stereotypes (Boyle, 1997; Rocco, 1999). Diversity training alone will not result in sweeping organizational change for disabled employees (Kulkarni, 2012b). HRD professionals should construct routine sensitivity training modules to nourish cohesion across divergent employee groups, disabled, and nondisabled alike, that promote an “organization-specific identity” (Kulkarni, 2012b, p. 150). The organization’s objectives should be combined with disability-diversity initiatives such as lessening conflict among workers (Kulkarni, 2012b; Wentling, 2004) to increase organizational cohesion.
Problem-based video instruction (PBVI) puts a human face on the exigencies of families caring for members with MR (Choi, 2007). Nondisabled learners visualize themselves working with PWD (Choi, 2007), which can be useful in reducing stigma and discrimination against people with MR (Choi, 2007). Using this technology, the abilities, limitations, and needs of disabled employees can be presented in a manner to allay negative reactions (Kulkarni, 2012a).
Managers are important decision makers (or gatekeepers) in an organization’s struggle for disability inclusiveness; however, in practice, disability inclusive efforts often bypass them (Rudstam, Gower, & Harris, 2016). Rudstam et al. (2016) promulgated their own just-in-time (JIT) intervention to assist management to adapt their leadership style to work with disabled employees. Adaptive leadership is a pragmatic approach to leading disabled employees (Maxey, Moore, & Hanson, 2016). Interestingly, adaptive leadership accommodates the intricacies of disability by adapting one’s leadership to it. Adaptive leadership mirrors the social model the same way that environments are to accommodate the disabled (Maxey et al., 2016). Managers can model behaviors that are conducive to disability inclusiveness and eschew the opposite (e.g., exclusivity; Kulkarni, 2012a).
Workplace Training for Disabled Employees
HRD can assist disabled employees in identifying skill deficits and educative interventions to remedy them (Wentling, 2004). Workplace education contrived solely to benefit disabled employees has received nominal treatment by HRD, such as training that undergirds the development of self-determination (Fornes, 2008), relational assimilation training (Kulkarni, 2012b), and training that refines their interpersonal skills (Boyle, 1997). Training programs designed for disabled employees can use technology to enhance skills and knowledge acquisition (Dotterer, 2009). One example is the use of desktop virtual reality (DVR) combined with assistive technology (AT) devices, which provides an immersive and simulated experience for PWD (Dotterer, 2009).
Training can reinforce disabled peoples’ sense of self-efficacy/confidence, which may stimulate informal learning where new information can be gleaned from discussions with others (Kulkarni, 2012a). In a similar vein, training employees with intellectual disabilities to cultivate self-determination skills improved their overall job satisfaction and job performance, and empowered them (Fornes et al., 2008; Fornes, Rosenberg, Rocco, & Gallagher, 2006). Position turnover of employees with intellectual disabilities can be prevented if proper “support systems which provided ongoing training and support [is provided] to maintain job skills” (Fornes et al., 2006, p. 174).
HRD can intervene on behalf of disabled employees to gain the “accommodations needed to contribute to the organizational mission” (Roessler et al., 2010, p. 420). Through ADA legislation, employers have a legal obligation to reasonably accommodate disabled employees during training as long as no undue hardship is incurred by the organization (Claus, 2012). For ADA protection to apply, the employee must communicate his or her need for accommodation, hopefully prior to training (Clardy, 2003). Accommodations such as alternative formats for materials are the responsibility of the employer even when conducted by a third-party vendor (Clardy, 2003). Training standards need to be aligned with the performance of essential job functions, and if there is testing, appropriate accommodations must be made (Clardy, 2003). The passing standard should be the same for all employees. Instructional designers should weigh the needs of disabled employees in the design and administration of workplace training (Clardy, 2003). This necessitates that needs be appraised upfront to determine what accommodations are needed (Clardy, 2003).
Research on training generally investigates improvements, accommodations, and learning outcomes. In a unique study, military training of new recruits was examined to see how female cadets fared when the training was designed to diminish individual power with the intent of creating a cohesive military team (Callahan, 2005). For some female cadets enrolled in the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), personal power and control stripping training practices resulted in the development of “dysfunctional” eating disorders to retrieve “control over their own bodies” (Callahan, 2005, p. 1064). In this case, training of otherwise “normal” women transformed them into women with a disability.
Harassment, Discrimination, and Allegations of Discharge-Related Discrimination
Disabled workers are disadvantaged in the same way that other “oppressed” groups are during downsizing (Bajawa & Woodall, 2005), with pay and benefits, and in other ways organizations mistreat employees. PWD are susceptible to mistreatment in the workplace, for example, discrimination, bullying, and sexual harassment (Fevre et al., 2013; Foster & Fosh, 2010). This can provoke mutinous thoughts that culminate in an employee’s intent to turnover (Fevre et al., 2013; Reio & Ghosh, 2009). HRD can educate employees with and/or without disabilities on the proper procedures for documenting perceived intimidation and harassment in the workplace (Roessler et al., 2010). A proactive response to disability-related workplace issues before they compromise one’s on-the-job performance, or threaten one’s position or tenure, can curtail the incidence of discharge and constructive discharge allegations (Rumrill et al., 2010).
Disabled employees are also unreasonably discharged because of their disability (Rumrill et al., 2010). Discharge is the involuntary, permanent termination of one’s employment status. Discriminatory discharge occurs on account of existing disability, past record of disability, or association with the disabled, or being regarded as disabled (Roessler et al., 2010; Rumrill et al., 2010). Constructive discharge involves the underhanded tactics of employers to intimidate disabled employees into terminating or resigning their position.
Employees with disabilities “are disproportionally discharged or fired from their jobs when issues related to their disabilities become evident in the workplace” (Rumrill et al., 2010, p. 430). Unlawful discharge allegations are more common than constructive discharge, and are the most cited form of discrimination borne by employees with disabilities (Rumrill & Fitzgerald, 2010; Rumrill et al., 2010). Thirty-five percent of all ADA Title I allegations filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since July 1992 have implicated employers in either unlawful discharge or constructive discharge (Rumrill & Fitzgerald, 2010; Rumrill et al., 2010). Allegers of discrimination have a one in five chance of prevailing in cases claiming either discharge or constructive discharge (Hurley, 2010).
Eversole and Graham (2012) envisage mentally ill (Bipolar Disorder, depression, and personality disorders) employees as instigators of workplace harassment, not vice versa. They propose that the “negative affect” emotions of fear and anxiety are antecedents to workplace incivility. Moreover, mentally ill employees, bereft of empathy, nourish the bedrock of incivility in the workplace. This research is troubling. Damaging generalizations about employees with mental illness are presented as if they are fact and universal. Using the medical perspective of disability, the environment and attitudes of coworkers are ignored as potential contributing factors. More importantly, the study reproduces an ablest worldview that “normal” people have sound minds, stable temperaments, and are fault-free beings.
Gaps in HRD Research, Recommendations, and Implications for Future Research
Disability should be of importance to HRD for several reasons. First, the number of PWD able and willing to work is increasing. Wounded veterans returning from war want to work and deserve a chance to work. Second, disabled people are more often than not denied the exact undiluted access to education and training that those without a disability receive (Collin, Lafontaine-Émond, & Pang, 2013). Third, disabled employees have historically been disadvantaged in terms of how little advanced work-related training they receive compared with nondisabled employees (Fevre et al., 2013; Jones, 2016; Schur et al., 2009). Fourth, the workplace interests of disabled employees have for the most part been ignored by HRD in terms of disability-diversity training, training and development, and career progression.
Scarcely have academics that have self-disclosed a disability contributed to HRD scholarship. In one precedent, Gedro et al. (2012), a few of the co-authors self-identified as recovered alcoholics. As one co-author of the present study has self-disclosed from an invisible disability perspective, we hope to inspire others with disabilities to participate in the investigation of issues related to disability. Disabled scholars can share their experiences in the same way members of other minority groups disclose and contribute research and thought pieces sharing insights from their experience with work, HRD, and other issues. For instance, preeminent lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) authors, or their dedicated allies, have made discernible strides in academia to abrogate LGBT issues in HRD. Therefore, the question begs to be answered: “Can an able-bodied [able-minded] person conduct research that contributes to our knowledge of disability?” (Rocco & Delgado, 2011, p. 9). Whether researchers with disabilities are apt-suited, or perhaps better qualified, to engage disability issues necessitates further exploration. Are nondisabled scholars comfortable getting close to disability? As nondisabled scholars write about disability as evidenced in this review, possibly the true question is can temporarily able-bodied scholars write about disability issues as true allies instead of objectifying the disabled? The present review has shown that nondisabled researchers have refrained from exploring the experiences of the disabled, instead opting to give voice to their nondisabled counterparts’ secondhand accounts of disability. Do they resist disability and advancing its inclusion in HRD because they seek to exclude and discriminate against the disabled? Or is disability an experience workers have simply invisible to the field?Are the perspectives of disabled workers unimportant to scholars?
Much of the HRD research about disability has been “quantitative,” which has resulted in the production of “objective” statistics about the shameful conditions disabled people withstand (Hidegh & Csillag, 2013). A shortcoming of the HRD literature is that it is exclusively from a nondisabled perspective. HRD has cared more for measuring the effects of disability on nondisabled people and their comfort levels (Fevre et al., 2013; Rocco, 2001). Disabled voices continue to be ignored, making disability an area where qualitative studies could document the varied workplace perspectives of disabled employees (Kulkarni & Lengnick-Hall, 2014; Rocco, 1999). The following questions could guide further research: How has workplace training made for a smoother transition and acceptance of self? How do disabled employees perceive their nondisabled coworkers’ attitudes toward their disability and their general inclusion in the workplace?
Further complicating the absence of research on disability is how employees with unrelated disabilities are treated differently from one another (Fevre et al., 2013). Employees living with physical disabilities experience different implications for employment and career outcomes in juxtaposition to employees with mental disabilities (Kulkarni, 2012a; Stone & Colella, 1996).
Qualitative research could explore how employees with mental, physical, and cognitive disabilities cope with stigma and discrimination differently, how coworkers treat them differently based on the disability, and how workplaces can be more productive when people with different disabilities are accommodated correctly. HRD has done little to acknowledge “the fluid boundaries of disability and how they intersect with our other identities” (Rocco & Delgado, 2011, p. 4). Consideration of how an aggregate of oppressions intersects, and viewing people as having more than one identity, can improve all scholarship on diversity and different minority identities (Byrd, 2009).
Additional research could narrow the knowing-doing chasm by examining the effectiveness of disability inclusive policies and compliance of policies from the top down. Few studies have discussed the positive outcomes that might occur when disabled employees are in the workplace or the positive impact on organizational polices, instead disability and PWD are considered a liability at work (Jones, 2016). It is a misperception that the ADA affects only human resource management functions. Once an employee is hired, HRD practitioners have a duty to determine with the employee what accommodations are needed during training, to facilitate CD and mentoring opportunities, and to ensure that the voice of employees with disabilities is considered when organizational change is being negotiated.
We must design programs that sensitize the workforce, both management and coworkers of PWD, to the existence of archetypical stigma of psychiatric, sensory, and cognitive disabilities (Roessler et al., 2010). Supervisors and coworkers must acquire techniques to communicate with cognitively and mentally disabled employees in ways supportive of their inclusion (Roessler et al., 2010; Rudstam et al., 2016).
Disability does not discriminate. As there is no “otherness” to disability (Williams-Whitt & Taras, 2010), HRD professionals, as human entities first and foremost, should begin to question their own vitality. Based on your own limitation(s), impairment(s), or experience with or being around disability, what type(s) of policies would you find, or like to find, in your workplace? Disability-centric policies implemented today may encourage employees who have closeted their disability to self-disclose, free of trepidation. The main implication of this present study is to spur HRD scholar-practitioners to revitalize dialogue and debate, and reanimate research on disability issues. HRD can do much more toward broadening HRD scholarship on how training, development, and CD can be utilized to foster the correct conditions for disability inclusiveness.
Concluding Thoughts
HRD has a record of resisting diversity generally (Bierema, 2010), and disability specifically (Rocco et al., 2014). HRD professionals are in an opportune position to create training initiatives or reward efforts that lead to entrenching conditions reminiscent of a positive, all-inclusive workplace (Kulkarni, 2012a; Reio & Ghosh, 2009). In short, this article advances three troubling propositions with the theoretical and/or practical dimensions of disability as it intersects with HRD: First, HRD resists disability diversity by excluding disability from its definition of diversity and overall HRD scholarship on diversity topics; second, HRD research squarely focuses on the perspectives of able-bodied/minded individuals and their levels of comfort working with the disabled; and third, mental and cognitive disabilities are not only missing from definitions of disability and diversity, but also as objects of analysis, are in much shorter supply than research exploring physical disabilities.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.