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

Abstract

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 understanding of the processes through which organizational spaces can disable employees with impairments and contribute to the unequal power relations between disabled and non-disabled employees. Based on 65 interviews, it shows how organizational spaces can disable employees with impairments through disabling productivity, social inclusion, independence, and physical comfort and safety. A first contribution this allows this study to make is identifying the different aspects involved in the production of ableist organizational spaces and the way they are connected to the relations of power between disabled and non-disabled employees. It shows how ableist organizational spaces are conceived in an ableist way, become dominated by ableist spatial practice and infuse lived experiences with ableism. Second, this study extends debates on disability in organizations by offering a spatial understanding of ableist notions of the ‘ideal employee’, the reproduction of ableist discourses, and embodied experiences of ableism in organizations. A third contribution this article makes is providing an understanding of the strategies employers and disabled employees use to (attempt to) manage ableist organizational spaces. It argues that as these strategies mainly aim to secure productive participation, they do not address, or can even contribute to, other disabling processes. In this way, they not only reproduce relations of power between employers and disabled employees but also do not fundamentally challenge those between disabled and non-disabled employees.