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Book part
Publication date: 9 May 2023

Ruth Rentschler, Ayse Collins, Karen Williams and Fara Azmat

Understanding disabled people as gray-collar workers who are under-paid, under-valued and under-employed is recognized as in urgent need of attention but remains unaddressed…

Abstract

Understanding disabled people as gray-collar workers who are under-paid, under-valued and under-employed is recognized as in urgent need of attention but remains unaddressed. Based on 30 semi-structured interviews with disabled people, observations and document analysis, the authors argue that the disabled gray-collar workers in the performing arts provide a context and socio-cultural perspective on how gray-collar workers can attain dignity through social inclusion. Building on a novel framework of four dimensions of social inclusion theory – access, participation, representation and empowerment – the authors identify social interactions portrayed in the performing arts in order to deconstruct the processes that normalize and reinforce exclusion and inequality. The authors demonstrate how social inclusion can be “enabled” which has implications for theory, policy and practice.

Details

Management and Organizational Studies on Blue- and Gray-collar Workers: Diversity of Collars
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-754-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 September 2019

Eva Nadai and Alan Canonica

As a “fictitious commodity” (Polanyi), that cannot be separated from the human being who is its owner, labor has a special moral significance. However, this moral quality is not a…

Abstract

As a “fictitious commodity” (Polanyi), that cannot be separated from the human being who is its owner, labor has a special moral significance. However, this moral quality is not a given but must be asserted in struggles over the value of labor. With the example of disabled workers in Switzerland, this chapter examines the moralization of labor as a means to revalue a category of workers who range far down the labor queue. Moralization mediates the tension between the normative societal goal of inclusion for disabled people and the freedom of employers to select the most “productive” workers. Drawing on the theoretical approach of the Economics of Convention the chapter analyzes the valuation frames proposed by economic and welfare state actors in political debates over the establishment of the Swiss disability insurance and the role of employers regarding occupational integration. A core concept used in negotiations of the value of disabled labor in the public arena and within individual businesses is the “social responsibility” of employers. Historically, employers’ associations successfully promoted the liberal principle of voluntary responsibility to prevent state interference in the labor market. In contrast, disability insurance argues predominantly within the market and the industrial convention to “sell” its clientele in the context of employer campaigns and case-related interactions with employers. Only recently, both sides started to reframe the employment of disabled people as a win–win affair, which would reconcile economic self-interest and the common good.

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1987

Brian Doyle

Contemporary interest in vulnerable employment groups has focused on women, ethnic minorities and the secondary labour market. Social discrimination, marginal employment and low…

Abstract

Contemporary interest in vulnerable employment groups has focused on women, ethnic minorities and the secondary labour market. Social discrimination, marginal employment and low pay are the badges of vulnerability of these groups. As Section 2 shows, labour law's response to employment vulnerability has been piecemeal and tangential with the result that progress towards the enjoyment of basic employment rights by vulnerable workers has been slow and fortuitous. People with disabilities possess many of the traits of vulnerability shared by other disadvantaged groups but receive only a footnote in the pages of labour law. This article records the developing debate on the employment rights of disabled people and places it in the context of the current analysis of employment vulnerability.

Details

Employee Relations, vol. 9 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0142-5455

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2012

Angus Duff and John Ferguson

This paper aims to explore the intersection of disability and accounting employment.

3909

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

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 25 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 2003

Jemi C. Granger and Brian H. Kleiner

Looks at US programmes for enabling individual disabled workers to be included into the workforce as these, sometimes highly‐qualified, people have been overlooked by…

874

Abstract

Looks at US programmes for enabling individual disabled workers to be included into the workforce as these, sometimes highly‐qualified, people have been overlooked by organizations. Further states that there are 30 million disabled US adults, of whom only 25 per cent are employed. Promotes various programmes which are beneficial to both disabled workers and employees. Concludes that if the USA could employ, or better use, more of the 23 million out of the 30 million disabled Americans, their contribution could be significant to the US economy.

Details

Equal Opportunities International, vol. 22 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0261-0159

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 July 2021

Gemma Bend and Sandra Fielden

This paper aims to contribute to prior gender-based conceptual models within organisational and management studies by incorporating an additional lens of disability. The authors…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to contribute to prior gender-based conceptual models within organisational and management studies by incorporating an additional lens of disability. The authors present a context specific and embodied based model that we call the “two-way mirror effect” which accounts for the environmental and discursive effects of gender and disability within the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews existing literature on gender, disability and employment and uses that literature to construct and support the concept of a two-way mirror effect.

Findings

By drawing on organisation and management-based studies, the authors have shown how previous models do not currently account for the experiences of disabled women within the workplace. Disabled workers, and especially disabled women face a myriad of unique barriers, including masculine and able-bodied employment practices (e.g. performative expectations) and exclusionary physical spaces (e.g. access, location to required facilities), that exclude them from full employment participation.

Practical implications

The review of existing literature and conceptual models reveal the gaps in research that academics and practitioners can build upon and the paper identifies the dominant norms that are embedded within organisational practices, which can be challenged to promote inclusion and equality.

Originality/value

The authors present a new intersectional-based conceptual model to fill a gap in organisational and management-based studies that accounts for the unique employment experiences of disabled employees, specifically disabled women.

Details

Gender in Management: An International Journal , vol. 36 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2413

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1978

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act…

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Abstract

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

Details

Managerial Law, vol. 21 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0558

Article
Publication date: 1 October 1975

DEIRDRE MORTON

Industry has a vital part to play in helping as many disabled people as possible to lead a worthwhile life, and in giving them the opportunity to earn their own living. Many…

Abstract

Industry has a vital part to play in helping as many disabled people as possible to lead a worthwhile life, and in giving them the opportunity to earn their own living. Many companies recognise this. Discussions staff from the Food Drink and Tobacco Industry Training Board have had with those concerned with the training and employment of handicapped workers, however, suggest that their potential is still not being fully recognised or utilised. Possibly this is because companies while wanting to help simply do not know how to go about it, although those with twenty or more employees are in fact required under the Government's quota scheme to employ a certain percentage of disabled workers, provided of course that this is practicable.

Details

Industrial and Commercial Training, vol. 7 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0019-7858

Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2019

Lisa Buchter

This chapter explores the development of organizational narratives of identities for embodying the qualified jobseeker with disabilities in the French job market.

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter explores the development of organizational narratives of identities for embodying the qualified jobseeker with disabilities in the French job market.

Methods/Approach

While the concept of “organizational narratives of identities” has primarily been used to study the access to services to individuals with “troubled identities,” my study looks at how organizational narratives are shaped in labor market intermediation for the professional integration of workers with disabilities.

Findings

In this context, fitting the right formula story goes beyond embodying the morally “deserving” target population in order to encompasses corporate-related expectations, such as demonstrating resilience and grit, as well as disclosure-related expectations, that navigates the contradictory injunction of the French antidiscrimination system to both demonstrate a commitment to diversity and to remain indifferent to differences.

Implications/Value

This chapter highlights the ways in which the cultural narratives surrounding disabled identities, workers’ identities, and the French cultural ideology of “indifference to differences” were translated into specific recruitment advice on the job market, as well as into organizational changes that favored the creation of a disability-friendly buffer zone in corporations: the activist disability manager. The chapter also shows how widely circulating cultural narratives shape, and are shaped by, organizational policies and procedures that can in turn shape personal experiences in the workforce.

Details

New Narratives of Disability
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-144-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Lisa Buchter

Previous theories discuss how corporate managers can stir anti-discrimination laws away from their initial social goal by managerializing the law. Yet, other actors – notably…

Abstract

Previous theories discuss how corporate managers can stir anti-discrimination laws away from their initial social goal by managerializing the law. Yet, other actors – notably insider activists – can contribute to move corporate regulations beyond merely symbolic compliance. I demonstrate this influence of activists with three cases studies: (1) LGBT activists for same-sex parental leave; (2) disability rights activists for implementing a quota; and (3) Muslim activists to secure accommodations in French workplaces. Through these cases, I show how activists can move corporate laws beyond compliance, pressure firms to go from merely symbolic to substantive compliance, and analyze mechanisms that explain their unequal success. Bringing together insights from the legal endogeneity theory and social movements theory, I analyze these activist legal intermediaries as actors faced with unequal structure of opportunities, and examine what factors hinder or favor an activist-driven legal endogeneity. I demonstrate the impact of more prescriptive regulations, the institutional power of union representatives (and their alignment with activists’ claims), reputational stakes for companies, and the resources of activists themselves (legal expertise, ability to reframe laws, and informal power within their organizations). Last, I show how activists leverage organizational and legal tools (collective agreement, diversity policies) to induce recoupling between formal commitments and informal practices.

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