Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities: Systematic Literature Review with Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The study aims to form a conceptual model for researchers engaged in analyzing and further improving current employment policy of specific states concerning persons with special needs, based on a review, analysis and systematization of the main conclusions and trends in the literature. The article presents the results of studies of temporal changes in publications over time and by topic, identifies trends in the change of used keywords, and establishes trends in the distribution of articles in the studied areas, which allows describing a conceptual model that reflects the essence and forms the basis of disability employment policy. The conceptual model was the result of studying global trends in the formation of disability employment policy through a review of 1,284 publications obtained from the Scopus database from 1918 to 2021 and their analysis based on various methodological approaches of bibliometric analysis. The results first revealed an increase from 31 articles in 2005 to 101 articles in 2018. Second, we found that 68% of the authors are from the United States. The article also identifies that disability is presented as a global problem and lists the reasons for the philosophical shift in the field of disability employment. The authors substantiate a new paradigm of disability employment policy and explain the growth of publications after adopting the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Finally, the article points out that the role of leadership and participation of persons with disabilities is established in building an inclusive, accessible and sustainable world. Temporal changes in the used keywords of publications showed an expansion of topics related to disability employment policy. Trends in the distribution of publications in the studied areas have shown social sciences and medicine as the main subject areas of policy in the field of disability employment.