What can disabled academics' career experiences offer to studies of organization?

Williams, Jannine (2011) What can disabled academics' career experiences offer to studies of organization? Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Whilst there have been calls to theorize and explore how disability and ableism are constructed through organizing processes as a contribution to the critique of knowledge construction in organization studies (Harlan and Robert, 1998; Hearn and Parkin, 1993; Mumby, 2008), to date such calls have not been developed.

Drawing upon the disability studies literature, a disability studies informed theoretical lens is developed and fused with the epistemological project in organization studies to answer the research question “What can disabled academics’ career experiences offer to studies of organization?”

The theoretical potential of a disability studies lens is developed through a narrative inquiry with eight disabled academics. To interpret disabled academics’ narrative accounts the voice-centred relational method (Mauthner and Doucet, 1998), genealogical snapshot(Carabine, 2001) and voice and visibility framework (Simpson and Lewis, 2005; 2007)were fused. This enabled an approach to interpreting how disabled academics both construct through narrative and are constructed through discourse to explore their career experiences.

Through a fusion of the disability studies lens and disability studies, boundaryless and academic career literatures, in-depth interpretations are offered which identify new insights into, and surface some of the discourses contributing to, the career boundaries disabled academics experience. This focus contributes to the boundaryless and academic career literatures by extending research to participants whose experiences are underresearched and under-theorized. The thesis offers insights into the different career boundaries disabled academics experience to those currently identified within the boundaryless and academic career literatures.

The importance of, and negating responses to, disability and impairment effects related ways of organizing are argued to contribute to the career boundaries disabled academics experience. Ableism is argued to inform some of the discourses theorized, contributing to the perception of disability and impairment effects related ways of organizing as negated differences outside of normative expectations.

The UK Higher Education context is complex. The career boundaries and discourses informing perceptions of disabled academics’ organizing requirements are argued to contribute to a hyper-complex organizing context. Within this hyper-complex context, disabled academics, and those they relate with, must negotiate to organize academic careers.

This thesis offers a disability studies lens to organization studies as a productive theoretical lens through which disability and ableism are theorized and identified as productive categories for analysis, and as contributions to, studies of organization.

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