Mechanisms of Disability Discrimination in Large Bureaucratic Organizations: Ascriptive Inequalities in the Workplace

Abstract

Studies of workplace discrimination have typically focused on empirically unobservable motives to explain ascriptive inequalities associated with class, gender, and race. Such studies usually have overlooked disability as an ascriptive status, and have offered little systematic research on the central question of this study: How, through what mechanisms, does disability discrimination operate in large, bureaucratic organizations? The in-depth personal interviews upon which this study is based reveal that interpersonal mechanisms of discrimination manifest as blatant and subtle acts of marginalization, fictionalization, and harassment. However, such interpersonal acts of discrimination would likely be less frequent or less consequential if not for the organizational mechanisms of tolerance and encouragement. The authors conclude that one of the central promises of the Americans with Disabilities Act, full inclusion and participation of people with disabilities in the workplace, is unlikely to be realized without renewed pressure for legislation that explicitly specifies the nature and extent of work organizations' responsibilities for creating a nonhostile environment and the consequences of not doing so.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are especially grateful to Frank T. Fitzgerald for verbally sparring with us as we formulated our arguments and for his fine-toothed editorial recommendations. Your insightful critique at all stages of this research has been invaluable. We thank our interviewees for sharing their lived experiences with us, the state administrators who facilitated our data collection efforts, our Project Advisory Board, all our students who helped with this project, especially Lindsey Lavery and David Lubin, for their superb research assistance. We are also indebted to the TSQ reviewers and its editors, Kevin Leicht and Peter Kivisto, for their insights and suggestions. This research was supported by grant number H133G20089 from the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, U.S. Department of Education, and by a Summer Grant from Roosevelt University.

NOTES

Notes

¹ To avoid labeling and reductionism (see Zola 1984), we use the term “people with disabilities,” while recognizing that for political reasons some disability scholars and activists prefer “disabled people.”

² Albertson's Inc. v. Kirkingburg [143 F.3d 1228]; Murphy v. United Parcel Service [141 F.3d 1185]; Sutton and Hinton v. United Air Lines [130 F.3d 893]; and Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams [224 F.3d 840].

³ Sandra Flowers v. Southern Regional Physician Services, Inc. [5th Cir., March 30, 2001]; Robert Fox v. General Motors [4th Cir., April 13, 2001].

⁴ A copy of the interview guide is available from the authors.

⁵ The agencies we selected to sample in (n = 4) provide a fair sampling of types of state workplaces. Although our study was not designed to compare agencies on their treatment of disability issues, our interviewees spontaneously reported common problems across agencies with appointment, promotion, retention, and reasonable accommodation, which, based on our analysis of the data, appear to be systematic across the agencies sampled in.

⁶ A copy of the recruitment letter and form requesting information on type of disability, work situation, and sociodemographics is available from the authors.

⁷ While the grounded theoretical approach is better known for “developing” substantive theory, its usefulness for theory elaboration, including using extant theories as a starting point from which to build, and extending existing theories through the integration of existing and emergent concepts and their dimensions has been convincingly established (Vaughan 1992) and is consistent with our purposes herein.

⁸ At all stages in the research process, we elicited and received feedback from our Project Advisory Board on a number of topics related to the larger research project on which this article is based. This Advisory Board included a wide range of professional experts and laypersons with and without disabilities. While we learned much from their expertise, knowledge, and experiences, final decisions regarding content and analysis remained with the principal investigators/authors.

⁹ As Morse points out, “in qualitative research, adequacy refers to the amount of data collected rather than to the number of subject, as in quantitative research. Adequacy is attained when sufficient data have been collected to saturate categories (i.e., when additional data collection produces no new data) and variation is both accounted for and understood (Morse 1998:76; see also Morse 1986).

¹⁰ In qualitative research, appropriateness refers to selecting suitable data or information for the theoretical requirements of the study and the emerging conceptual model (Morse 1986, 1998).

¹¹ Although our study was not designed to compare the experiences of workers with and without disabilities, it is plausible that workers without disabilities are also fictionalized. We suspect, however, that the fictionalization experienced by people with disabilities is more blatantly insensitive, misinformed, and derogatory. Since disabilities give rise to existential and aesthetic anxieties (Hahn 1988), it is also likely that workers with disabilities experience a disproportionately high share of hostility-driven fictionalization. As the last minority group to have their civil rights in the workplace recognized, they may be easy targets for discriminatory acts such as fictionalization because organizational culture lags behind the nonhostile environment mandate of the ADA. Quite possibly, people with disabilities remain the most visible social group that it is socially acceptable to disparage.

¹² Noncompetitive or so-called “set-aside jobs” were designed to provide immediate job opportunities for qualified people with disabilities. Applicants were not required to take civil service examinations, the usual method of entry to state employment. Since people in noncompetitive jobs are not required to take civil service exams, and, therefore, not ranked on exam scores, coworkers often assumed they were not qualified. These set-aside jobs, while well meaning, have fed into the notion that people with disabilities cannot perform on par with their coworkers. Many more people with disabilities were employed in competitive jobs than noncompetitive jobs both in our sample and in the state sampled in.

¹³ Although Ghaziani's (2004) research sampled only gay men with AIDS transitioning back to work after leaving on disability, his findings are quite possibly transferable more generally to people with various types of disability.

¹⁴ b/c Programs involve a preferential hiring strategy designed to circumvent the lengthy application and testing process for civil service jobs and thereby to assist qualified people with disabilities, who are disadvantaged in the labor market, gain access to state employment in greater numbers. Getting a noncompetitive job, however, is difficult. It requires becoming medically certified as eligible, finding a job (often without organizational assistance), and convincing the supervisor of that job to reclassify the position. Willingness to reclassify, particularly higher-grade jobs, reportedly has lessened since the organizational incentive of not counting noncompetitive jobs toward “fill level” (i.e., the hiring ceiling imposed by the Division of Budget in state agencies) was abandoned in 1990.

¹⁵ An “entry-level” job refers to any position where people from outside the agency can enter state service based on open examinations and qualifications. “Entry-level” does not necessarily mean jobs at the lowest grade level.

¹⁶ The people in our sample have worked in the State Civil Service System on average 14 years.

¹⁷ The merit system in civil service is based on examination scores, lists of eligible candidates, and the “rule of three,” under which the successful applicant is selected for promotion from among the three candidates with the highest exam scores on the eligible list.

¹⁸ Although costs associated with reasonable accommodation are often presumed to be high, studies done by Harris and Associates, Inc. and National Organization on Disability (1995) and the President's Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities (1994) estimate that the average cost of reasonable accommodation per employee is $200 and $233, respectively. The U.S. Department of Labor, Job Accommodation Network (JAN) (1999) reports that employers gain close to $35 in benefits for each dollar invested in accommodation (retrieved August 24, 2006, from http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/stats/bencosts0799.html).