Search results
1 – 10 of over 12000Jannine Williams and Nicola Patterson
There is a dearth of studies exploring the intersection of gender and disability within entrepreneurship research. This is despite women’s entrepreneurship research encouraging an…
Abstract
Purpose
There is a dearth of studies exploring the intersection of gender and disability within entrepreneurship research. This is despite women’s entrepreneurship research encouraging an expansion of the research questions asked and approaches taken. As a contribution to this debate, the purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of gender and disability as social categorizations which can shape entrepreneurial opportunities and experiences for disabled women entrepreneurs.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper offers an intersectional conceptual lens for the study of disabled women entrepreneurs to explore a concern for a particular social group – women – at a neglected point of intersection – disability – within the social setting of entrepreneurship. Guided by the research question (how can gender and feminist disability theory contribute to the development of an intersectional theoretical lens for future entrepreneurship research?), the potential for new theoretical insights to emerge in the entrepreneurship field is identified.
Findings
Through a gender and disability intersectional lens for entrepreneurship research, four theoretical synergies between gender and disability research are identified: the economic rationale; flexibility, individualism and meritocracy; and social and human capital. In addition to the theoretical synergies, the paper highlights three theoretical variances: the anomalous body and bodily variation; sexuality, beauty and appearance; and multiple experiences of care as potentially generative areas for women’s entrepreneurship research. The paper identifies new directions for future gender, disability and entrepreneurship research by outlining research questions for each synergy and variance which draw attention to disabled women entrepreneurs’ experiences of choice and control within and across different spaces and processes of entrepreneuring.
Originality/value
The conceptual intersectional lens offered to study disabled women’s entrepreneurship highlights new directions for exploring experiences of entrepreneuring at the intersection of disability and gender. The paper brings disability into view as a social category that should be of concern to feminist entrepreneurship researchers by surfacing different dimensions of experience to those currently explored. Through the new directions outlined, future research can further disrupt the prevailing discourse of individualism and meritocracy that perpetuates success as an individual’s responsibility, and instead offer the potential for richer understandings of entrepreneuring which has a gender and disability consciousness.
Details
Keywords
Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they…
Abstract
Background
Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they compound harms for both victims and communities.
Purpose
This user-led research explores how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors most effectively resist the harm and injustice they experience after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape.
Design/methodology/approach
Feminist standpoint methods are employed with reciprocity as central. This small-scale peer research was undertaken with University ethics and supervision over a five year period. Subjects (n=522) consisted of disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors in North of England.
Findings
The intersectional nature of violence against disabled women unsettles constructed macro binaries of public/private space violence and the location of disabled women as inherently vulnerable. Findings demonstrate how seizing collective identity can usefully resist re-victimization, tackle the harms after disablist hate crime involving rape and resist the homogenization of both women and disabled people.
Practical implications
The chapter outlines inequalities in disabled people’s human rights and recommends service and policy improvements, as well as informing methods for conducting ethical research.
Originality/value
This is perhaps the first user-led, social model based feminist standpoint research to explore the collective resistance to harm after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape. It crossed impairment boundaries and included community living, segregated institutions and women who rely on perpetrators for personal assistance. It offers new evidence of how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors can collectively unsettle the harms of disablist hate crime and rape and achieve justice and safety on a micro level.
Details
Keywords
Gillian Parekh, Kathryn Underwood and Abneet Atwal
Issues related to disability and childhood are frequently examined across the social sciences and humanities. Many researchers conduct studies with disabled children as the focus…
Abstract
Issues related to disability and childhood are frequently examined across the social sciences and humanities. Many researchers conduct studies with disabled children as the focus of study, as research participants and/or as research drivers. Disabled children represent two categories of identified vulnerability, thus, requiring stringent ethical boundaries in terms of recruitment, consent, research methods, analysis, disclosure and knowledge mobilisation. Although many safeguards apply to research with all children, the focus on disability and disabled childhoods initiates further ethical scrutiny. In this chapter, the authors examine a number of ethical dilemmas that have emerged when conducting research with, and in relation to, disabled children. In particular, the authors will examine the roles of disabled children and youth in advancing research on policy and practice within education and care sectors. The authors query the possibilities and limitations that emerge when employing institutional ethnographic, participatory action and phenomenological research. The chapter unpacks some of the tricky tensions around asking children to speak about disability and share their experiences of disablement when disability is so frequently stigmatised. The authors examine the impacts of predetermined categories of impairment within quantitative research. Across methodologies, data collection based on assumptions of impairment can skew analyses towards a medicalised framework of disability, leaving little room for socio-cultural perspectives on disablement, including how these approaches trigger ethical issues around notions of representation and agency in research with disabled children.
Details
Keywords
Rita Newton, Marcus Ormerod and Pam Thomas
The aim of this paper is to report on a study undertaken into disabled people's experience of the built environment when attempting to access and stay in employment.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to report on a study undertaken into disabled people's experience of the built environment when attempting to access and stay in employment.
Design/methodology/approach
Narratives were collected using semi‐structured interviews with 38 disabled people, all of whom had experience of paid and unpaid work.
Findings
Analysis of the interview narratives shows that disabled people experience a range of barriers and enablers in the built environment both to gaining employment and to staying in employment, and an accessible environment contributes to a successful employment experience.
Research limitations/implications
This is a small exploratory study of disabled people's experience of the workplace built environment. Future research could focus in more detail on whether specific design features reduce the requirement for reasonable adjustments.
Practical implications
The implications are that disabled people are experiencing discrimination when working environments present barriers and reasonable adjustments, as required by the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and 2005, are not made.
Originality/value
This is exploratory research and provides an insight into the experience of disabled people of the physical workplace environment, presenting examples of good and poor practice.
Details
Keywords
Stemming from the doctoral research, the purpose of this paper is to comment on disabled international students’ experiences of using assistive technology and transcription…
Abstract
Purpose
Stemming from the doctoral research, the purpose of this paper is to comment on disabled international students’ experiences of using assistive technology and transcription services in facilitating an equal educational experience to that of non-disabled students.
Design/methodology/approach
By using such qualitative research methods as interviews and a focus group, the aim has been to discuss the benefits gained as well as difficulties encountered whilst utilising these facilities.
Findings
Thus, a range of barriers to disabled international students in the area of technological support and adaptations based on their identities as “disabled”, “international” and “disabled international” students is identified. This has lead to a further discussion of the extent to which the barriers to the disability services concerned are created, reinforced and exacerbated by the interplay of students’ different identities.
Originality/value
The absence of any academic research into such unique experiences of disabled international students, particularly in the British context, highlights the original and timely nature of this work.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to explore the intersection of disability and accounting employment.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the intersection of disability and accounting employment.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses oral history accounts of 12 disabled accountants. The authors investigate narrators' experiences of being disabled people and professional accountants, identify the barriers they encounter in professional employment, and how they (re)negotiate professional work.
Findings
The narrators' accounts are complex and diverse. The narratives record a discourse of success, offset by the consistent identification of social and environmental barriers relating to limited opportunities, resources, and support.
Originality/value
The paper develops the limited research on the relationship between disability and the accounting profession, expands the limited literature on disabled professionals' experience of work, provides voice for disabled accountants, adds to the limited oral histories available within accounting, and augments the accumulated literature considering the accounting profession and minorities.
Details
Keywords
Song Ee Kim and Xinran Y. Lehto
While the topical areas of service failure and complaints have been systematically investigated for the general traveling public, service failure issues for disabled tourists have…
Abstract
Purpose
While the topical areas of service failure and complaints have been systematically investigated for the general traveling public, service failure issues for disabled tourists have been widely ignored. This exploratory study attempts to provide some insights into this phenomenon by analyzing disabled travelers' complaints reported through online customer complaint websites.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 316 customer complaints were collected and analyzed utilizing a modified procedure of the Critical Incident Technique (CIT). Differences in service failure dimensions in industry sector and recovery type were investigated through the correspondence analysis.
Findings
Critical incidents of disabled travelers were classified into three dimensions of service failures including service delivery failure, unfulfilled special requests, and unsolicited employee conduct. Significant relationships in service failure dimensions were identified in the industry sectors and types of recovery.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations of this study are unidentifiable demographic information and lack of necessary details, since this study is based on textual data collected from online complaint/review websites. For further research, more inclusive quantitative data could provide a more complete picture.
Practical implications
The findings of this study could represent a valuable step toward assessing the current status of service failure provided by hospitality and tourism industry, and thus provide useful insights for practitioners to more effectively serve this market segment.
Originality/value
This study serves as exploratory research and contributes to a better understanding of the tourism experience of individuals with disabilities.
Details
Keywords
People subjectively engage in the production and reproduction of what constitutes “feeling normal.” Objective standards of normalcy for the able-bodied are created and maintained…
Abstract
People subjectively engage in the production and reproduction of what constitutes “feeling normal.” Objective standards of normalcy for the able-bodied are created and maintained by institutions (e.g., medicine, the state, business, the mass media, and family), and these standards are learned by individuals who socialize the next generation in a continuous cycle. Having a disability does not exempt a person from standards and values of “able-bodied normalcy,” nor does it prevent her/him from reproducing these standards for future generations. Thus, it is possible, if not probable, that persons with disabilities live in and reproduce the able-bodied lifeworld, sustaining, what is for the person with a physical disability, an unattainable standard of normalcy. Approximating and ultimately achieving “normalcy” in this situation or at least the presentation of “normalcy” (Goffman, 1959, 1963) may occupy a sizeable portion of everyday life. More importantly here, “feeling normal” emerges when the social constructions of reality allows the person with a physical disability to be part of a generation and everyday life. There is, in other words, a “frame” for defining normality, and physical disability is a key to changing this frame (Goffman, 1974).
Jane Seale, Mike Wald and E Draffan
There is a need for more in‐depth exploration of the e‐learning experiences of disabled learners in higher education, taking into account the complex relationship between learners…
Abstract
There is a need for more in‐depth exploration of the e‐learning experiences of disabled learners in higher education, taking into account the complex relationship between learners (skills, knowledge and beliefs), their assistive technologies and the e‐learning contexts in which learners are required to operate. Participatory methods appear to have great potential in enabling the voice of disabled learners to be a more central focus of e‐learning studies. This paper will describe and evaluate a two‐year research project called LExDis, which aims to use participatory methods to explore the e‐learning experiences of disabled learners in one higher education institution. The experience of conducting phase one of the LExDis project will be discussed with regards to three main challenges to using participatory methods: informed participation; valued participation; and empowered participation.
Details
Keywords
Elizabeth Vaughan and Helen Woodruffe‐Burton
The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a new disabled service user‐specific service quality model ARCHSECRET against a modified SERVQUAL model in the context of disabled…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a new disabled service user‐specific service quality model ARCHSECRET against a modified SERVQUAL model in the context of disabled students within higher education.
Design/methodology/approach
The application of SERVQUAL in the voluntary sector had raised serious issues on its portability into this sector in general and its ability to measure the experience of the disabled service user in particular. In consequence, a disabled service user‐specific service quality model – ARCHSECRET – was developed which led to this research being designed to compare ARCHSECRET and a modified SERVQUAL model in terms of their ability to predict and explain the variation in the service quality experience of disabled students in higher education.
Findings
ARCHSECRET was superior to the modified SERVQUAL in terms of its overall predictive power; ARCHSECRET key drivers were different and better in predictive power than those of the modified SERVQUAL; and ARCHSECRET was found to be reliable and valid for the measurement of the disabled student experience in higher education, while acting as a diagnostic tool for the identification of service quality shortfalls.
Research limitations/implications
The reported research should be regarded as a pilot study whose results are worthy of further investigation among larger samples of disabled service users.
Originality/value
It is held that the disabled service user‐specific ARCHSECRET model has made a positive contribution to the measurement of service quality within the context of disabled students in higher education while demonstrating its superiority over the SERVQUAL scale which did not quite “measure up”.
Details