Justifying (Non)Discrimination Against Disabled Workers in Emerging Economies: Managerial Choice, Business Versus Moral Case Arguments and Home Versus Host Country Effects
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Author | Pauline Dibben,Geoffrey Wood,Gareth Crockett,Nikola Bakalov |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12611 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 34, 767–786 (2023)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12611
Justifying (Non)Discrimination Against
Disabled Workers in Emerging Economies:
Managerial Choice, Business Versus Moral
Case Arguments and Home Versus Host
Country Effects
Pauline Dibben ,1Geoffrey Wood ,2Gareth Crockett3
and Nikola Bakalov4
1Shefeld University Management School, University of Shefeld, Shefeld, S17 4AX, UK, 2West er n
University, London, Ontario, NCA 5C2, Canada, 3York Management School, University of York, York, YO10
5ZF, UK, and 4Independent Researcher, Shefeld, UK
Corresponding author email: p.dibben@shefeld.ac.uk
It is widely known that disabled people face discrimination in all walks of life, including
employment. Unfortunately, legal protection often does not work as well as hoped, espe-
cially in emerging markets. This leads to the core objective of this study: to understand
why rms might not discriminate against disabled people. Rather than simply identify-
ing islands of non-discrimination or best practice, we seek to better understand what has
made them so and how much this might be replicable, taking account of legal regulation,
rm policy and managerial choice. The qualitative ndings revealhow non-discrimination
is underpinned by an interplay between business and moral case inuences and interac-
tion between country of domicile and origin structural effects. Building on transaction
cost economics, theoretical insights are afforded on this dynamic process. Although it
is often assumed that multinational enterprises infuse best practices from abroad, non-
discrimination in most instances followed country of domicile managerial choice, which
in turn represented a mix of altruism and expediency. We posit that a lack of direction
from headquarters might be because disability rights were assigned a somewhat low pri-
ority at central organizational level.
Introduction
Given that discrimination is widespread, this pa-
per seeks to develop a better understanding of
The authors acknowledge invaluable editorial feedback
and insightful comments from the reviewers. This work
was supported by the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC) [GrantNo. ES/K006452/1]. The authors
also acknowledge the support and contributions of
the broader project team and the Advisory Board, in
addition to those interviewed for the purpose of this
research.
why multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries
in emerging economies might not discriminate
against disabled workers.1Around 15% of the
1The term ‘disabled people’ is used rather than ‘people
with disabilities’ to emphasize social barriers to inclusion
and the ways in which society can disable people. The
terms ‘emerging/developing’ and ‘advanced’ economies
are used but we accept that the former constitute the ma-
jority world. Accurate gures forthe number of disabled
people do not exist. In South Africa, census data sug-
gest that only 7.5% of the population is disabled, but
A free video abstract to accompany this article can be found online at: https://youtu.be/VEbJBWpzWxU
A free Teaching and Learning Guide to accompany this article is available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/
10.1111/(ISSN)1467-8551/homepage/teaching___learning_guides.htm
© 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy
of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distri-
bution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.
768 Dibben et al.
world’spopulation has a disability,and they are the
world’s largest minority (World Health Organiza-
tion, 2018). Many benets may ow to employers
from better using this untapped pool of workers.
Yet, disproportionate numbers of disabled people
lack good-quality jobs, typically earn less (Kruse
et al., 2018), experience low levels of well-being
due to discrimination (Hackett et al., 2020) and
face worse working conditions in times of reces-
sion (Jones et al., 2020). It is already known that
managers have tended to focus on what disabled
workers cannot rather than can do (Ameri et al.,
2018), on safety concerns (Zanoni, 2011) and the
(perceived) costs of employing and accommodat-
ing them, even though these costs can often be very
low (Blanck, 2020). There is also widespread evi-
dence of cultural and institutional constraints and
social stigma around disability within emerging
and developing economies (Ebuenyi et al., 2018).
However, there is limited understanding of diver-
sity management in these countries.
This paper develops literature in the eld of
diversity management which seeks to explore
discrimination and non-discrimination (Collien,
Sieben and Muller-Camen, 2016; Kaufmann,
Krings and Sczesny, 2016; Triana et al., 2021) and
accords specic attention to contextual effects in
emerging markets. The literature on diversity has
tended to neglect disability (Triana et al., 2021),
primarily focusing on gender (Poorhosseinzadeh
and Strachan, 2020), ethnicity (Guest, 2019) and
age (Collien, Sieben and Muller-Camen, 2016;
Kaufmann, Krings and Sczesny, 2016); more
specically, the literature on disabled workers in
emerging markets is rather more limited (Beatty
et al., 2019). We focus on the two BRICS coun-
tries with the highest level of inequality, Brazil
and South Africa.
This paper explores why rms might not dis-
criminate against disabled people, taking into
consideration managerial choice (inuenced by
the business and moral case for diversity), host
country and home country effects. The paper rst
complements existing research by answering calls
to extend research beyond analysis of the business
case for diversity (Triana et al., 2021): while man-
agers might be inuenced by business case argu-
this excludes those living in institutions and those with
certain conditions (Du Plessis, 2017); in Brazil, a broade
measurement has led to ofcial census datasuggesting the
gure to be around 23% of the population (IBGE, 2010).
ments (economic benets) for employing disabled
workers, they might alternatively be inuenced
by moral concerns, linked either to the pursuit
of social justice or to paternalistic management
(Pellegrini and Scandura, 2008). In evaluatingthis,
we furthermore provide insights into the moral
basis of managerial decision-making (cf. Elm and
Nichols, 1993). Understanding these rationales is
important since they could inuence how disabled
workers are treated.
Second, managerial choice on employing dis-
abled workers within a multinational rm might in
turn be affected by host country inuences,includ-
ing legislation on quotas. Recent research in a Eu-
ropean setting has found that a quota system can
empower disabled employees in raising awareness
of their rights (Richard and Hennekam, 2020),
but there have been contrasting views on how quo-
tas affect managerial decision-making (Sargeant,
Radevich-Katsaroumpa and Inesti, 2018). Un-
covering the extent to which quotas inuence
managerial choices in emerging markets might
have implications for future government policy.
Third, we contribute to longstanding debates in
the literature on comparativeinstitutional analysis
on country of origin effects. This body of litera-
ture has explored why MNEs from coordinated
market economies (CMEs) might be more inclined
to adopt collaborativehuman resource (HR) prac-
tices than their counterparts from liberal market
economies (LMEs) – reecting stronger stake-
holder rights in the case of the former and share-
holder dominance in the latter (Brewster, Wood
and Brookes, 2008; Cooke et al., 2019). Yet, coun-
try of origin effects on managing diversity have so
far been neglected in the literature, with notable
exceptions including a study of multinationals in
Germany which suggested that rm country of
origin (e.g. whether companies originated from
Germany or the United States) did not affect the
design of diversity management (Süss and Kleiner,
2007). This paper helps to extend this literature by
considering the managerial choices of those work-
ing in MNEs from different countries of origin in
relation to diversity, and disability in particular,
in emerging market settings, exploring whether
they take a more instrumental and individualist
approach (commonly associated with LMEs) or a
collaborative (CME) approach to management of
their disabled employee stakeholders.
To address these gaps in understanding, our
study therefore seeks to address the following
© 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British
Academy of Management.
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting