On the treatment of persons with disabilities in organizations: A review and research agenda

• Author: Adrienne J. Colella,Mukta Kulkarni,David C. Baldridge,Stephan A. Boehm,Joy E. Beatty
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21940
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019

HR SCIENCE FORUM

On the treatment of persons with disabilities in organizations:

A review and research agenda

Joy E. Beatty

1

| David C. Baldridge

2*

| Stephan A. Boehm

3*

| Mukta Kulkarni

4*

|

Adrienne J. Colella

5

1

College of Business, University of Michigan-

Dearborn, Dearborn, Michigan

2

College of Business, Oregon State University,

Corvallis, Oregon

3

Center for Disability and Integration,

University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

4

Organisational Behaviour & Human

Resources Management, Indian Institute of

Management-Bangalore, Bangalore, India

5

Freeman School of Business, Tulane

University, New Orleans, Louisiana

Correspondence

Joy E. Beatty, College of Business, University

of Michigan-Dearborn, Fairlane Center South,

19000 Hubbard Drive, Dearborn, MI.

48126-2638.

Email: jebeatty@umich.edu

Human resource practitioners play a crucial role in promoting equitable treatment of persons

with disabilities, and practitioner's decisions should be guided by solid evidence-based research.

We offer a systematic review of the empirical research on the treatment of persons with disabil-

ities in organizations, using Stone and Colella's seminal theoretical model of the factors influenc-

ing the treatment of persons with disabilities in work organizations, to ask: What does the

available research reveal about workplace treatment of persons with disabilities, and what

remains understudied? Our review of 88 empirical studies from management, rehabilitation, psy-

chology, and sociology research highlights seven gaps and limitations in extant research:

(a) implicit definitions of workplace treatment; (b) neglect of national context variation;

(c) missing differentiation between disability populations; (d) overreliance on available data sets;

(e) predominance of single-source, cross-sectional data; (f) neglect of individual differences and

identities in the presence of disability; and (g) lack of specificity on underlying stigma processes.

To support the development of more inclusive workplaces, we recommend increased research

collaborations between human resource researchers and practitioners on the study of specific

disabilities and contexts, and efforts to define and expand notions of treatment to capture more

nuanced outcomes.

KEYWORDS

barriers, disability, diversity, ethical treatment, stereotyping, stigma

1|INTRODUCTION

Globally, disability awareness is increasing as interest in diversity

issues grows (Boehm & Dwertmann, 2015) and as legislative frame-

works addressing this population expand. This trend is likely to con-

tinue because aging workforces are more likely to experience

disabling conditions (United Nations, 2006). The United Nations Con-

vention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) has increased

global awareness of disability rights and empowered persons with dis-

abilities by restating and clarifying human rights, including the right to

work (Harpur, 2012). The growing recognition of disability as a diver-

sity dimension and the advent of a disability rights paradigm are help-

ful, yet barriers to full inclusion remain. For example, employment

rates average 40% of the overall employment level, and

unemployment rates are typically twice the overall average (World

Health Organization, 2011). In the United States, disability is linked to

lower average pay, lower job security, less formal and informal train-

ing, less participation in decisions, and less inclusion (Schur, Kruse,

Blasi, & Blanck, 2009). These labor statistics apply to a large number

of people: approximately 12.6% of the U.S. population (Kraus, 2017)

and approximately one sixth (1.1 billion people) of the global popula-

tion (Schur, Kruse, & Blanck, 2013; World Health Organization, 2011)

have disabilities.

Mirroring the increase in disability awareness, research interest

has also been increasing; however, it still lags behind that of other

diversity dimensions, such as gender, race, and ethnicity (Colella,

Hebl, & King, 2017). Understandably, disability research is complex

because of the large number, multiplicity, and range of disabling con-

ditions. Human resource (HR) practitioners need solid evidence-based

*Authors Baldridge, Boehm, and Kulkarni contributed equally to the article.

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21940

Hum Resour Manage. 2019;58:119–137. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 119

research to guide their policies and decision-making because they play

a critical role in breaking barriers to inclusion and in promoting diver-

sity and equitable treatment for all employees. They can, therefore,

benefit from a systematic review of empirical research addressing

issues related to staffing, development, performance appraisal,

rewards, inclusion, and other HR management topics for employees

with disabilities. We suggest taking stock of evidence-based findings

is an important step in recognizing what is known, identifying critical

gaps in this knowledge, and recommending future research directions.

Thus, the objective of this article is to offer a rigorous and sys-

tematic review of empirical findings from studies published between

1996 and 2016 regarding the workplace treatment of persons with

disabilities, using the concepts and relationships outlined in Stone and

Colella's (1996) seminal model as an organizing framework. We chose

this 20-year time frame to coincide with publication of the Stone and

Colella’s (1996) model and also because this period saw a significant

increase in disability studies in the management literature. Further-

more, few articles in this area were published prior to 1996, and it

appears that all or most of them were included in the Stone and

Colella (1996) review. Our guiding research question is as follows:

What does the available research tell us about workplace treatment of

persons with a disability, and what remains understudied? Evidence

drawn from 88 studies published in top-quartile journals is analyzed

to consider contextual and personal antecedents of workplace treat-

ment, types of treatment, and the responses of persons with disabil-

ities to the treatment they receive. We build upon other important

reviews of disability research that have investigated segments of the

Stone and Colella (1996) model. Specifically, Colella and Bruyère

(2011) reviewed studies on the influence of industrial and organiza-

tional psychology concepts on disability employment issues, including

accommodation and selection; Colella, DeNisi, and Varma (1998)

reviewed the effects of disability on performance appraisals through

stereotyping and performance expectations. Other reviews have also

explicitly linked their findings to the Stone and Colella (1996) model.

For example, a review by Vornholt, Uitdewilligen, and Nijhuis (2013)

applied the theory of reasoned action to investigate how employers'

and coworkers' attitudes lead to acceptance of persons with disabil-

ities, and Ren, Paetzold, and Colella (2008) conducted a meta-

analytical review of experimental studies on the personal and situa-

tional factors that influence HR judgments toward persons with dis-

abilities, explicitly mentioning the Stone and Colella (1996) model as it

applies to their hypotheses and moderating variables (specifically, the

type of disability, observer characteristics, performance evaluations

and expectations, and hiring decisions).

While each of these reviews is helpful in furthering research on

this important diversity topic, none takes a comprehensive view of all

elements of the Stone and Colella (1996) framework. We, therefore,

build upon and extend these prior literature reviews of disability

research, casting a wider net to incorporate both quantitative and

qualitative studies, as well as the full set of variables identified in the

Stone and Colella (1996) model. Our focus on quantitative and quali-

tative empirical studies from multiple fields of research is consistent

with the interdisciplinary focus of the Stone and Colella (1996) model

and offers a holistic review for HR practitioners that includes both

positive (e.g., supportive behavior from supervisors and colleagues)

and negative (e.g., discrimination) findings on workplace treatment.

Disability research covers a broad spectrum of conditions, and the

phenomenon of disability as a lived experience is often captured in

qualitative studies through conversations in interviews and focus

groups. Although qualitative studies are not amenable to traditional

meta-analyses, we include them in this review because they offer

important contributions to fully understand workplace treatment. Our

aim is to highlight which relationships in the model have been sup-

ported, identify relationships that have not yet been tested, and syn-

thesize findings from studies to encourage and guide future research.

2|OVERVIEW OF THE ORGANIZING

FRAMEWORK

More than 20 years ago, Stone and Colella (1996) integrated the liter-

ature from the fields of management, social psychology, sociology,

and rehabilitation psychology to predict factors affecting the treat-

ment of persons with disabilities in work organizations. We use this

framework as the basis for organizing the workplace disability litera-

ture because this seminal work used an interdisciplinary approach,

underscoring the complex nature of disability to draw specific work-

place implications. Its combination of propositions, categories of vari-

ables, and relationships represented remains the most comprehensive

framework focusing on the factors affecting the treatment of persons

with disabilities in the workplace. For instance, although the specific

technology or norms and values in work organizations have changed

over the past two decades, these characteristics can still be expected

to have an impact on outcomes such as the nature of the job or

observers' treatment of persons with disabilities. Furthermore, as

noted here, this model has been used in prior published reviews, sug-

gesting it is a well-known touchstone for the disability domain.

The Stone and Colella (1996) framework includes nine broad vari-

ables, mentioned later in italics (see Figure 1). The primary dependent

variable is observers' treatment of persons with disabilities (i.e., job suit-

ability ratings, job assignments, pay increases, training opportunities,

mentoring, treatment as tokens, exclusion in work groups, information

sharing, helpingbehavior, and exclusion in social activities). Six anteced-

ent variables are posited to influence observers' treatment of persons

with disabilities: legislation,organizational characteristics,attributes of

persons with disabilities,attributes of observers,the nature of thejob,and

observers' job-related expectations. Psychological consequences for

observers (i.e., observers' categorization of, stereotyping about, expecta-

tions for, and affective response towardpersons with disabilities)medi-

ate the relationship between the antecedents and treatment. Then,

observers' treatment of persons with disabilities influences responses of

persons with disabilities (i.e., affective andbehavioral responses). Finally,

feedback loops are proposed that highlightthe fact that the responses

of persons with disabilities in turn influenceantecedents.

Figure 1 shows a streamlined model that retains the nine variables

in four main sets of relationships to show direct relationships between

the antecedent variables (legislation, organizational characteristics, attri-

butes of persons with disabilities, attributes of observers, nature of job,

and observers' job-related expectations) and the main dependent vari-

able, observers' treatment of persons with disabilities. We include

120 BEATTY ET AL.