Management research on disabilities: examining methodological challenges and possible solutions

Abstract

Providing companies and managers with knowledge about the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace is important since they often face significant obstacles such as discrimination and high unemployment rates. Poor workplace inclusion also has detrimental effects for companies, such as discrimination litigation, untapped personnel resources and missed business opportunities. Yet, empirical research on the topic of disability is extremely limited, especially in top-tier management journals. Although this shortcoming in research has often been mentioned by scholars, few explanations for it have been put forward. I propose that specific methodological challenges for quantitative research in the field are an important contributor to this shortcoming. In this paper, I identify and outline specific challenges through expert interviews, identify underlying issues and provide first suggestions on how to address these. The goal is to help increase the number of high-quality research studies in the organizational sciences and thereby advance our knowledge of the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace.

Keywords:

• disability
• inclusion
• methodological challenges
• minorities
• quantitative methods
• solutions

Acknowledgements

The author greatly appreciates his co-chair Lisa Nishii’s feedback on earlier versions of the dissertation chapter from which this article is derived. He further acknowledges the support of William Trochim and Kristie McAlpine, as well as helpful comments from Judy Clair, Katherine Phillips, and Ann Marie Ryan during the 2013 GDO publishing workshop. Furthermore, he thanks the Editor of this paper, Lisa Schur, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Finally, he thanks all of the scholars in the disability field who contributed comments.

Notes

An early version of this manuscript was presented at the Academy of Management conference 2011 in San Antonio.

1. These underlying aspects were identified through comments during the review process for this paper and I would like to thank Editor Schur and one of the reviewers for their helpful comments in this regard. While I acknowledge that this classification is not the single right one I believe that it is helpful in guiding the thinking about how to address the challenges for disability research (see the section: ways to address the research challenges).

2. At http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/section503.htm.

3. The sample weight is the population proportion/sample proportion.