A Review of Management for Employee with Disabilities Research and its Future Directions

Abstract

This paper summarizes research relevant to the effect of management of employees with disabilities, on the attitudes and behavior of employees with disabilities and the employment rate of people with disabilities in companies, and suggests directions for future research. The literatures on management of employees with disabilities are divided into three categories: ⑴ corporate policies of disability employment and HR practices for persons with disabilities, ⑵ behavior of supervisors and colleagues around employees with disabilities, and ⑶ reasonable accommodations provided individually to employees with disabilities. The following four points are presented as future directions. First, there is a need for comprehensive research on the management of employees with disabilities in the workplace by integrating research on leadership, HR practices, and reasonable accommodation. Second, in contrast to accumulated research on corporate policies of disability employment and the design of HR practices, there is a lack of accumulated research on the implementation of HR practices. So further research is needed. Third, since there are conflicting results on the effects of reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities, future research should investigate the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of management of employees with disabilities, including reasonable accommodation, HR practices, and the behavior of supervisors and colleagues. Finally, because based on the social identity theory, the research fields are concentrated in the workplaces where the people with disabilities are distributed. Therefore, a comprehensive view of employment of people with disabilities in Japan should be taken by comparing and examining the workplaces where the employees with disabilities are centrally positioned with the workplaces where the employees with disabilities are distributed.