Organizational inclusion has become a key concept when dealing with the topic of diversity and inequality in organizations. Its core claim is to be all-embracing and to 'leave no one behind'. However, can mainstream as well as critical inclusion approaches live up to this claim? In this paper I revisit two central concepts - belongingness and recognition - of both approaches from a feminist disability lens in general and the interests and needs of autistic people in particular. The analysis shows that mainstream and critical inclusion approaches rely on implicit ableist assumptions, which results in autistic people becoming 'the other Other' of the organizational inclusion discourse. Yet, instead of judging the 'inclusion project' as failed, the paper pleads for the acknowledgement of inclusion as always partial, based on implicit boundary drawing. Such a view makes it possible to discuss the il-/legitimacy of certain boundaries and their inclusionary and exclusionary consequences.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/gwao.12574

The inclusivity of inclusion approaches: A relational perspective on inclusion and exclusion in organizations

To understand the experiences of the disabled in academia, a fully accessible and inclusive workshop conference was held in March 2018. Grounded in critical disability studies within a constructivist inquiry analytical approach, this article provides a contextualisation of ableism in academia garnered through creative data generation. The nuanced experiences of disabled academics in higher education as well as their collective understandings of these experiences as constructed through normalisation and able-bodiedness are presented. We show that disabled academics are marginalised and othered in academic institutions; that the neoliberalisation of higher education has created productivity expectations, which contribute to the silencing of the disabled academics’ perspectives and experiences due to constructions of normality and stigmatisation; and that it is important to enact policies, procedures, and practices that value disabled academics and bring about cultural and institutional changes in favour of equality and inclusion.

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Exploring experiences of ableism in academia: a constructivist inquiry.

Labour market stratification and discrimination of disabled people remains a less researched topic compared to other minorities despite being a notably disadvantaged group. This article explores the employer side of discrimination against disabled jobseekers by using a field experiment conducted in Norway as its point of departure. Through qualitative follow-up interviews, this article investigates employers’ assessments of equally qualified mobility-impaired candidates in a field experiment. The article employs the theoretical perspective of the ideal worker to shed light on how employers evaluate disabled jobseekers against an able-bodied ideal. Although previous literature on disability and the ideal worker has shown the imperative of asserting productivity, the findings in the current article reveal a stronger emphasis on social considerations as grounds for exclusion. The findings show how tacit constructions of the ideal worker not only relate to productivity but also to the creation of the socially integrated workplace.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09500170211041303

Disability Discrimination: Employer Considerations of Disabled Jobseekers in Light of the Ideal Worker

This article explores the lived experiences of disabled men and women who work in sheltered employment. Specifically, it analyses how the entanglement of sociomaterial practices affects disabled wo...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09500170211034762

‘There Is Nothing Wrong with Me’: The Materialisation of Disability in Sheltered Employment:

In a time and place where being impaired is equated to being of lesser economic value, some disabled people take matters into their own hands by creating their own job and converting their bodily d...

Turning disability into a business: Disabled entrepreneurs’ anomalous bodily capital:

Adopting a Lefebvrian perspective that draws attention to the connection between space and power, this study aims to contribute to the organizational literature by offering an in-depth understandin...

Wendy Hoeven

Papers

Disabling organizational spaces: Exploring the processes through which spatial environments disable employees with impairments: