Disability and the socialization of accounting professionals (original) (raw)
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Disability and accounting firms: Evidence from the UK
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2007
An accumulation of interpretative studies in a range of international contexts has considered gender, race and social class in accounting employment. However, no work has considered accounting firms' attitudes towards employing disabled people. This omission is surprising given the passing of successive disability rights legislation in the United States since 1918 and the United Kingdom (UK) since 1944 and consequent changes in public expectations regarding equal employment opportunities for disabled people. This paper examines the UK accounting profession's response to changes in disability legislation. Using a survey administered to UK firms and an analysis of the Big Four firms' 2003 UK annual reviews, we report that firms' have a minimal understanding of disability, that disability is not a significant component of firms' personnel policies, that firms lag behind other organizations in their attitudes to disability, and images of disability are wholly absent from firms' annual reviews. We discuss these findings in the context of prior accounting research which considers gender, race and social class, which is used to develop a research agenda.
The British Accounting Review, 2007
In this paper we consider attitudes of human resource managers towards the employment and employability of disabled people in United Kingdom (UK) accounting firms. Only one study [Duff, A., Ferguson, R.J., in press. Disability and accounting firms: Evidence from the UK. Critical Perspectives on Accounting] has considered the employment of disabled people in accounting firms, despite a growing number of studies considering gender, race and social class in accounting employment. This dearth of evidence is unexpected given the passing of disability rights legislation in the UK in 1995 and the United States of America in 1990. Our investigation utilizes nine semi-structured interviews with human resource managers (or their equivalent) in large and medium-sized UK accounting firms. Three participants are from the Big Four firms, which dominate the market for accounting and auditing services. Views were elicited regarding: (i) drivers of disability awareness, (ii) the role of partners, (iii) how firms view disability, (iv) impairments firms view as a problem, and (v) job applications. Participants' responses indicate an awareness of existing legislation governing disability issues, in particular, the UK's Disability Discrimination Act, 1995. However, there is evidence that accounting firms restrict their understanding of disability to legal definitions. The study identifies specific impairments which firms see as impediments to employment and critically assesses firms' perceptions of the employability of disabled people. r
APPROACH TO RESEARCH Since September 2002, the Institute has launched a dozen qualitative studies that are grounded in (and contribute to) the emerging knowledge base of Critical Disability Studies. Most are designed to reveal the complex invisible "work" – generously defined – performed by disabled people in every day/night life. This includes the work of disabled bank employees in becoming/staying corporately viable, the work of disabled people in managing their engagement with personal support workers, and the work of disabled women as they use clothing practices to mediate societal expectations around 'normal' female bodies. Institute research is not hypothesis-driven but committed to open-ended processes that build from stage to stage. As researchers, our role is primarily facilitative, catalytic and curatorial. Along with observation and participation, we rely heavily on talking to people. We favour methods that create dialogue about experience through inform...
Disability & Society, 2013
This article critically explores the working lives and views of disabled senior staff working in UK organisations. The qualitative research at the core of the article establishes that some disabled people are confounding established notions of disabled people only working in peripheral employment roles by exploring the working lives and perceptions of disabled managers. The findings do, however, point to continued barriers to what disabled staff in senior positions can be seen to do and be organisationally. Here both practical and ontological risk inheres in organisationally induced change, openness about impairment and risky identities. Such ideas, it is argued, present limits to further promotion and workplace inclusion for some disabled managers.
‘To prove I’m not incapable, I overcompensate’: Disability, ideal workers, the academy
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The experiences of academics with disability have received modest but growing attention internationally, but virtually none in the Australian context. This article outlines research findings from a study examining their experiences at a large Australian university. The article uses a materialist framework to demonstrate how capitalist social relations shape and demarcate an ‘ideal university worker’, how disabled workers find it difficult to meet this norm, and the limited assistance to do so provided by managers and labour relations policy frameworks. The research findings point to a profound policy gap between employer and government disability policy inclusion frameworks and the workplace experience of academics. This breach requires further investigation and, potentially, the development of alternate strategies for workplace management of disabilities if there are to be inroads towards equity. JEL codes: Z13
Relations, Communication and Services. The Case of Disabled Workers in a Public Organisation
EDUCATIONAL REFLECTIVE PRACTICES, 2013
The article illustrates the outcome of some empirical research carried out at the University of Florence on the topic of the relations and communication of disabled people employed in the various organisational contexts of the university. The theoretical model followed is that of care in the workplace as a means and end for the formative well-being of subjects who, in a particular existential condition, may suffer the professional environment rather than live it to the full in terms of human and social resources. The survey, conducted according to a qualitative-quantitative method, tends to highlight how the educational-formative practice of everyday working life has to be built up through the highly reflective personal contribution of the subjects who work alongside and with the disabled people.