Job Satisfaction of Employees with Disabilities: The Role of Perceived Structural Flexibility

• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Author: David J.G. Dwertmann,Miriam K. Baumgärtner,Heike Bruch,Stephan A. Boehm
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21673
• Date: 01 March 2015

Human Resource Management, March–April 2015, Vol. 54, No. 2. Pp. 323–343

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21673

Correspondence to: Miriam K. Baumgärtner, Center for Disability and Integration (CDI-HSG), University of

St.Gallen, Rosenbergstrasse 51, CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland, Phone: +41 (0)71 224 3195,

Fax: +41 (0)71 220 3290, E-mail: miriam.baumgaertner@unisg.ch

JOB SATISFACTION OF EMPLOYEES

WITH DISABILITIES: THE ROLE

OFPERCEIVED STRUCTURAL

FLEXIBILITY

MIRIAM K. BAUMGÄRTNER,

DAVID J.G. DWERTMANN, STEPHAN A. BOEHM,

AND HEIKEBRUCH

With this article we contribute to the inclusion of employees with disabilities

in the workplace. Based on Stone and Colella’s (1996) model of factors affect-

ing the treatment of employees with disabilities in organizations, we con-

centrate on the investigation of job satisfaction as a focal affective response.

Besides examining job satisfaction differences between employees with and

without disabilities, we focus on perceived f‌l exibility as an organizational

boundary condition, arguing for its inf‌l uence on the job satisfaction of em-

ployees with disabilities. We introduce perceived centralization and formali-

zation, representing different indicators of f‌l exibility, as moderators of the

disability–job satisfaction relationship. Regression analysis using data from

110 small and medium-sized companies with 4,141 employees reveals that

employees with disabilities are less satisf‌i ed than their colleagues without

disabilities in highly centralized environments. As predicted, a decentralized

organizational context relates to higher job satisfaction levels for all employ-

ees, but especially for those having a disability. Contrary to our hypothesis,

perceived formalization does not signif‌i cantly inf‌l uence the relationship be-

tween having a disability and job satisfaction. However, our results clearly

indicate the need for companies and especially human resource departments

to better adapt to the needs of people with disabilities by creating f‌l exible

working environments. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: diversity, attitudes, satisfaction

324 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, MARCH–APRIL 2015

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

Approximately 15

percent, or more

than a billion people

in the world, have

some form of

disability.

particularly interested in detecting and

explaining potential differences between

employees with and without disabilities

(e.g., with regard to perceived LMX quality;

Colella & Varma, 2001; or human resource

judgments; Ren et al., 2008). When compa-

nies realize and understand such differences

in workplace perceptions, they can create

organizational conditions that foster a fair

treatment and a successful vocational inclu-

sion of all employees—including those with

disabilities.

Based on Stone and Colella’s (1996) model

of factors affecting the treatment of employ-

ees with disabilities in organizations, our

study strives to advance this field of research

by addressing two gaps: (1) investigating job

satisfaction differences between employees

with and without disabilities, and by follow-

ing a call of Colella and Bruyère (2011) (2)

examining moderators of the relationship

between disability status and work-related

outcomes. Job attitudes are “one of the most

useful pieces of information an organization

can have about its employees” (Harrison,

Newman, & Roth, 2006, pp. 320–321).

Hereby, job satisfaction is “the most focal

employee attitude” (Saari & Judge, 2004, p.

395), and related to several productivity crite-

ria (Riketta, 2008).

Consequently, organizations interested in

both the long-term inclusion of all employees

and their financial success must make sure

that they understand if and why the job satis-

faction of various groups of employees differ

and what they can do to raise the satisfaction

levels of these groups. Therefore, they have

to analyze both demographic main effects

(e.g., the influence of having a disability on

job satisfaction) as well as potential boundary

conditions that moderate such job satisfac-

tion differences.

According to the literature, the relation-

ship between having a disability and job

satisfaction is still unclear. There are several

theoretical reasons for a positive as well as a

negative relationship, which is also reflected

by inconsistent empirical findings. In order

to further examine such potential job sat-

isfaction differences, we build upon Stone

and Colella’s (1996) model as our central

Introduction

Companies and human resource

managers face an increasingly di-

verse workforce (e.g., Lorbiecki &

Jack, 2000), of which people with

disabilities comprise an important

but still largely overlooked group (Lengnick-

Hall, Gaunt, & Kulkarni, 2008). The World

Health Organization (WHO) defines disabil-

ity as “the umbrella term for impairments,

activity limitations and participation restric-

tions, referring to the negative aspects of the

interaction between an individual (with a

health condition) and that individual’s con-

textual factors (environmental and personal

factors)” (WHO, 2011, p. 4). Approximately

15 percent, or more than a billion people

in the world, have some form of disability

(WHO, 2011). In other words, people with

disabilities are the world’s largest

minority (United Nations, 2006).

These numbers and the conse-

quent importance of this minority

group as employees, customers,

and stakeholder is not reflected in

the attention of companies and

scholars yet. Moore, Konrad, Yang,

Ng, and Doherty (2011) stated that

disability status as a diversity attri-

bute is not only underrepresented

in practice, but also in research on

diversity management. Despite an

increase of research following the enactment

of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

of 1990, especially in the fields of law, soci-

ology, economics, and rehabilitation, studies

investigating the effects of disabilities in the

workplace are still underrepresented in the lit-

erature of industrial and organizational psy-

chology (Colella & Bruyère, 2011; Colella &

Varma, 2001; Ren, Paetzold, & Colella, 2008).

This situation is especially staggering against

the background that the number of diversity

studies has almost doubled every five years

(time frame: 1988–2007; Harrison & Klein,

2007) and disability is typically considered to

be one of the main diversity dimensions (e.g.,

Bell, 2012; Shore etal., 2009).

When investigating the effects of dis-

ability in the workplace, scholars have been