Acceptance of People with Disabilities at Work. A literature review and validation of a newly developed questionnaire

Friday, November 1, 2013

First author:

Vornholt K.

Symposium:

The Essentials of Belonging: Inclusive Employment

Type:

Oral

Organisations

¹ Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands

² Professor in ‘Inclusive (labor) organization’ at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, funded by the Atlant Groep, Maastricht, the Netherlands

All authors:

Katharina Vornholt¹, Sjir Uitdewilligen¹, Frans J. N. Nijhuis²

Stream:

Inclusive Employment

Keywords:

employees with disabilities, acceptance, sustainable employment, stigma

Presentation

acceptance_of_people_with_disabilities_at_work_katharina_vornholt.pdf,

the_essentials_of_belonging_-_research_on_the_inclusion_of_people_with_disabilities_at_work.pdf,

inclusive_climate_philippe_nelissen.pdf,

inclusive_work_redesign_gemma_van_ruitenbeek.pdf

Aim

A lack of social acceptance is often the reason why employees with disabilities fail to stay in regular organizations for sustained periods. The study presents a coherent review of the extant literature on factors affecting the acceptance of people with disabilities in regular employment. Based on the findings a questionnaire was developed and validated to assess the acceptance of employees with disabilities within a group of colleagues.

Method

We conducted a search of the recent literature on the acceptance of people with disabilities at work. In total 40 articles were selected, coded and analyzed. Based on the results a questionnaire on acceptance of employees with disabilities was developed and validated.

Results

Results will be presented on the antecedents and consequences of acceptance.

Conclusion

The literature review revealed that the concept “acceptance of people with disabilities at work” has never been clearly defined and methodically investigated. We contribute to the literature in three important ways: (1) by developing a definition of acceptance based on classical attitude literature, (2) by creating a literature based framework of antecedents and consequence of acceptance, and (3) by developing and validating an instrument to assess the acceptance of people with disabilities at work. The present study is, therefore, a first step towards the development of a robust measure of acceptance and the identification of factors contributing to acceptance of employees with disabilities.