Hearing Loss and Career Attitudes: Disengaging from Lower Quality LMX

Abstract

Isolation from professional connections can negatively impact how employees with disabilities feel about their careers, and research suggests that poorer quality employee-supervisor relationships can exacerbate isolation. In a sample of 181 deaf and hard of hearing subordinates, we investigate how professional isolation helps explain the relation between severity of hearing loss and subordinates’ career attitudes, and how this process differs depending on the quality of LMX relationships. We find that subordinates with less severe hearing loss report more isolation than subordinates with more severe hearing loss, and in turn report lower career commitment and career satisfaction. Yet, these effects only hold in lower quality LMX relationships. We build theory for the LMX and stigma literatures by predicting these effects using the theoretical perspective of possible selves. These findings suggest that lower quality LMX relationships are not experienced as hurdles for all employees with disabilities, and disability impairment may produce resilience against isolation.