Age and Assessments of Disability Accommodation Request Normative Appropriateness

• Author: David C. Baldridge,Michele L. Swift
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21679
• Date: 01 May 2016

Human Resource Management, May–June 2016, Vol. 55, No. 3. Pp. 385–400

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21679

Correspondence to: Michele L. Swift, Assistant Professor, Oregon State University, College of Business,

2751 SW Jefferson Street, Corvallis, OR 97331-2603, Phone: 541.737.4110, Fax: 541-737.4890,

E-mail: michele.swift@bus. oregonstate.edu

(Baldridge & Swift, 2013) and that lack of per-

ceived normative support is among the most

common reasons for withholding requests. That

is, beyond the legal merit of an accommodation

request, people with disabilities attempt to assess

whether or not people at work, including super-

visors and coworkers, would approve of them

requesting a particular disability accommoda-

tion (Baldridge & Veiga, 2006). As a result, even

though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

of 1990, for example, prohibits discrimination

As employees age, do they perceive more

or less normative support for request-

ing disability accommodation? We raise

this question because in the United

States and elsewhere the labor force con-

tinues to age (Posthuma & Campion, 2009), and

as age increases, employees are more likely to have

disabilities that require accommodation (Brault,

2008). Research on workplace accommodation

indicates that employees with disabilities often

do not request needed disability accommodation

AGE AND ASSESSMENTS OF

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION

REQUEST NORMATIVE

APPROPRIATENESS

DAVID C. BALDRIDGE AND MICHELE L. SWIFT

In the United States, the labor force continues to age. As age increases, so does

the likeliness of needing disability accommodation. Prior research indicates that

people with disabilities often do not request needed accommodations when

they assess that others at work would perceive a request as normatively inap-

propriate. Little, however, is currently known about the impact of age on these

assessments. In this study, we integrate prior research on age, disability, social

identity, and climate to propose and then test a model of the relationship between

requesters’ age and their normative assessments using survey data from 242

people who became hearing impaired prior to entering the workforce. As hypoth-

esized, requester age was negatively associated with normative appropriateness

assessment favorability. Moreover, this negative infl uence was stronger in for-

profi t organizational contexts and in workgroup contexts in which the requester

lacked a coworker with a disability. Having a coworker with a similar disability

also partially mediated the moderating effect of organization type on the associa-

tion between age and normative appropriateness assessment favorability. Impli-

cations for research and practice are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: employee rights, legal issues, disability, age, accommodation

386 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, MAY–JUNE 2016

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

Simply put, people

with disabilities

appear to face a

straightforward yet

troubling question,

“If I ask for a needed

accommodation, will

I be better or worse

off?”

and social pressure for individuals in many

nations to work later in life. Yet, as we explain

in this article, even with legislation ensuring the

right to disability accommodation, older employ-

ees with disabilities may perceive less support than

younger employees with disabilities for requesting

needed disability accommodation. In our view, if

employees are expected to work to an older age,

it is essential that human resource (HR) profes-

sionals and managers create climates where older

workers can anticipate normative support for dis-

ability accommodation requests. Toward that end,

scholars need to better understand factors associ-

ated with favorable and unfavorable normative

assessments.

In the current study, we first draw on social

identity theory and the workplace age and dis-

ability literature to explore how age and disability

influence normative appropriateness assessments

for requesting disability accommodation. We then

draw on the organizational climate literature to

examine the potential moderating influence of

the workplace context. In so doing, we extend

prior research in at least four important ways.

First, we extend the limited research on request-

ers’ normative appropriateness assessments. These

assessments are critical because research indicates

that people with disabilities often do not request

needed disability accommodation when they

do not anticipate normative support, yet little is

currently known about factors that shape these

pivotal assessments. Second, as encouraged by

Baldridge and Veiga (2006), we investigate the role

of an important requester attribute, age. The rela-

tionship between requesters’ age and their nor-

mative appropriateness assessments is interesting

and important to study because age and disabil-

ity are correlated, yet age and disability can also

be expected to compete for salience in observers’

social identity categorization of a person making

a disability accommodation request. While age

does not affect the legal merit of an accommoda-

tion request, age can influence supervisors’ and

coworkers’ perceptions of the requester as a mem-

ber of a social identity group (i.e., disabled, old).

These categorizations, in turn, affect normative

expectations regarding what behaviors are appro-

priate. Third, we extend the work of Baldridge and

Swift (2013), Baldridge and Veiga (2001, 2006),

and Davison and colleagues (2009) by examining

the influence of the workplace request context on

the strength of the relationship between requester

age and normative appropriateness assessment

favorability. In particular, we examine one orga-

nizational and one workgroup attribute thought

to be important that remain understudied: orga-

nizational type (i.e., the impact of working in a

in employment against people with a disability

and explicitly forbids employers from considering

potential negative coworker reactions in deciding

whether or not to grant a disability accommo-

dation, people with disabilities often withhold

requests when they perceive that others would

not be supportive (Davison, O’Leary, Schlosberg,

& Bing, 2009). Coworkers are a significant part

of employees’ workplace experience (Chiaburu &

Harrison, 2008), so coworkers’ anticipated reac-

tions to an accommodation request is expected

to significantly affect the likelihood of requesting

accommodation. Further, it has been suggested

that normative assessments are particularly impor-

tant because many employers and supervisors seek

to avoid the cost and inconvenience they associate

with disability accommodation (Basas, 2008) and

subtly discouraging requests is thought to create

less legal risk than outright refusal once requests

are made (Baldridge & Veiga, 2006).

The withholding of disability

accommodation requests is con-

cerning because people with disabil-

ities often have the best knowledge

regarding when accommodation is

needed and which accommodations

would be most helpful (Baldridge &

Swift, 2013). If people with disabili-

ties are discouraged from requesting

accommodation, valuable perfor-

mance information is lost (Baldridge

& Veiga, 2001), and it may be impos-

sible for these employees to contrib-

ute fully to their work organizations

(Markel & Barclay, 2009). Requesting

accommodation in an unsupport-

ive context, however, may involve

psychosocial costs to the requester

that outweigh the anticipated benefit of receiv-

ing accommodation (Baldridge & Veiga, 2006).

Simply put, people with disabilities appear to face

a straightforward yet troubling question, “If I ask

for a needed accommodation, will I be better or

worse off?”

Research also indicates that a person’s age

can affect normative expectations regarding the

appropriateness of requesting help (Mackenzie,

Gekoski, & Knox, 2006), yet a review of the litera-

ture did not uncover research specifically exam-

ining the impact of an employee’s age on his or

her assessments of the normative appropriateness

of requesting disability accommodation. This is

a significant gap in the literature because older

employees represent a significant, and growing,

portion of the workforce (Ng & Feldman, 2008,

2012), age is positively correlated with disability

(Brault, 2008), and there is significant economic