The managerial journey toward inclusivity : A qualitative study of developmental opportunities in the labor market for people with disabilities

Abstract: Diversity and inclusivity in the business world has gained larger focus from media and customers over the past 60 years, however a large focus has been aimed at gender, ethnicity and race whilst other types of diversity have not been as researched. The inclusivity of people with disabilities in the regular labor market has been neglected to a large extent. All people should be included in the workplace which can be seen as a reflection of society as a whole, especially in regard to the Swedish model of government agency assistance from the company Samhall. In this study we have combined frameworks from diversity management, critical disability theory and justice theory to create a study examining how the developmental opportunities of people with disabilities are affected by assumptions and fairness. This study was conducted with the help of Samhall's regional office in Västerbotten and Örnsköldsvik. Samhall employs 26 000 people in Sweden with the goal of creating meaningful work for people with reduced working ability, developing their skills to be ready for the regular labor market. This study was designed from a managerial perspective, and we therefore decided to use a qualitative approach by interviewing six managers from Samhall using a semi-structured format. We wanted to gain insight on how society and other companies interact with Samhall, and how they work with development to reach their final goals. Due to the limited number of studies about people with disabilities from a social standpoint we were able to establish a research gap. Many of the current studies from a social perspective are focused on developmental perspective from young ages, or the perspective is from a medical standpoint. Studies with people with disabilities as a part of diversity management have yet to be created to any greater extent. By further including a perspective of equality and justice in this we were able to address issues of conflict as well, as a part of developmental work. The interviewees from Samhall are managers with varying amounts of experience within Samhall and varying experiences working with people with disabilities before their work in the organization. The managers also had varied job assignments which were able to contribute to a more diverse perspective on everything from daily interactions with society to policy creation and medical paperwork. In our study we researched six different assumptions about disabilities including the social model of disability, valuing diversity, rights, voices, language and transformative politics. From diversity management we used instrumental and terminal values to help us understand the developmental work. Finally, we used a framework of equality categorization including equality rule, relative justice and objective justice to compare how things work within and outside of Samhall and see what the employees respond to in the best way and to further cultivate development for the employees. We did a thematic analysis to be able to compare the answers of our different interviewees and find out what really works and to see what the current situations truly look like. The research showed that assumptions do affect people with disabilities, however, not to the same extent as previous literature suggests. Furthermore, we discovered that the instrumental values used in the developmental work for people with disabilities in Samhall can be transferred to other companies as well, and therefore hopefully intrigue and incentivize more employers to take the step of hiring from Samhall and people with disabilities in general. The fairness aspect of our research also provided insight in how to prioritize and how this can aiding and resolving conflict.