Disability

Are you disabled? Yes or no? This is a question you may be asked in the course of applying for a job in the UK. Why? It might be to help ensure the employer can make reasonable adjustments that will help a person with a disability to meet the demands of the job. But what is disability? It seems to indicate a lack, an inability to do certain things, an impairment. However, as Strauss (2013: 461) has pointed out, many psychiatric disorders seem to be an excessive version of some trait that is considered socially desirable – e.g. ADHD is excessive energy, obsession is excessive focus, autism is excessive individualist autonomy and self-reliance. The excess seems to turn something positive into an impairment – or at least it is seen as such. But by whom? Is it seen as such by the person who ‘has’ it? By a doctor or psychiatrist who diagnoses it? By other people who see the person as atypical and ‘impaired’? Or by some combination and interaction between all three? For those of us who do not identify ourselves as disabled, disability might seem a

marginal issue – particularly in the workplace. One to be dealt with in the relatively rare cases we come into contact with someone who we identify as disabled (unless, of course, we work with or for the disabled). However, the issue of disability deserves wider attention and, arguably, enables us to think about how we deal with difference in the workplace that might have relevance beyond the issue of disability as such. The issue of disability forces us to think through many issues that are shared with other identities considered in this book, but in complex ways. The issue of disability, it seems to me, sheds interesting light on organizations and work. It brings into sharp relief, and makes us question, what is assumed to be ‘normal’. Moreover, in these neoliberal times, when organizations strive to be ‘high-performing’ organizations, it may not even be enough to be normal – one must strive for ‘excellence’, strive towards an abstract, ideal model of an employee that may not exist on this earth.