Disability inequality and the recruitment process: responding to legal and technological developments

This thesis investigates how recruitment and selection practices impose social barriers for disabled people in the UK labour market. Despite the growing use of online recruitment methods adopted by employers, current literature has neglected the reactions of job applicants to web-based recruitment and selection practices from an equality perspective, in particular the voices and experiences of disabled jobseekers and their unequal access to the Internet. The research foregrounds the concepts of inequality regimes and the ideal worker to show that social barriers and disability discrimination occur within recruitment and selection practices and can result in disability inequality, as well as gender, race or class inequality. This thesis demonstrates that the notion of the ideal worker––in general a masculine notion–– is embedded within society and the labour market, and is formed around ableist norms of ‘ideal qualities and behaviour’ that a worker should have, and which views disabled people as less productive compared to non-disabled people. These implicit ideas about the ideal worker can have a significant, although often unintended, effect on recruitment and selection practices and produce inequalities in organisations. Through 22 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with disabled jobseekers and employment advisors from two disabled people’s organisations that worked with these individuals, and 12 interviews with employers over a one-year period, accounts of disability inequality embedded within traditional and online recruitment and selection practices are studied. This research has been designed around emancipatory principles of disability research and emphasises the importance of the social model of disability for disabled people and the disabled people’s movement in the UK. Likewise, it contributes to theoretical literature on the extended social model of disability to highlight that disability occurs because of social oppression associated with relationships, at both the macro and micro scales, between impaired and non-impaired people. The aim of this study has been to represent as genuinely as possible the needs and voices of disabled people and their organisations in order to challenge social arrangements that lead to disability inequality, in recruitment and selection practices via the Internet

Einfluss der Umstellungsosteotomie auf die postoperative Position des Kondylus und auf die Patientenzufriedenheit

Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Beurteilung der Kondylenposition durch eine Umstellungsosteotomie des Ober- und/oder Unterkiefers. Zusätzlich erfolgte eine Befragung bezüglich der subjektivem Beschwerdesymptomatik im Bereich der Kiefergelenke. Hierzu wurden Patienten untersucht, bei denen im Zeitraum von 01.01.2009 bis 31.12.2017 eine Unterkieferrückverlagerung oder Unterkiefervorverlagerung, bzw. in beiden Kiefern, also „bimaxillär“ oder auch „bignath“, eine Umstellungsosteotomie durchgeführt wurde. Die Untersuchung erfolgte durch Analyse der Fernröntgenseitbilder, welche vor, unmittelbar nach der Operation und ca. sechs Monate postoperativ als Verlaufskontrolle erstellt wurden. Zusätzlich wurden den Patienten Fragebögen ausgehändigt, mit denen die subjektiven Beschwerden im Bereich der Kiefergelenke spezifiziert werden sollten

Connected early-career experiences of equality in academia during the pandemic and beyond: Our liminal journey

In this paper, we draw on our subjective experiences as two female early-career academics during the global COVID-19 pandemic. While we acknowledge that the pandemic had negative implications for many female scholars due to compulsory telework or increased family responsibilities, we also want to shed light on the empowering experiences shaped by collegial support that became an important part of our pandemic story. We build on the theory of liminality to explain how the events triggered by the pandemic allowed us to break out of our uncomfortable occupational limbo (i.e., feeling “locked-in” to the identity of a foreign-born PhD graduate) and, through creating a kind of equality, resulted in some unique opportunities and challenges. During these difficult times, shaped by an increasing fear of us or our family catching COVID-19, we embarked on a betwixt-and-between state that allowed us to grow as academics as a part of a collective

Burnout from an extended social model perspective:Lived experiences of burnout, lasting burnout effects and returning to work

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, workplaces were already creating a pandemic leading to the burnout of its workers. Depending on the severity, burnout can result in extended periods of inability to work, after which individuals potentially return to work. However, the effects of burnout are often not over when individuals return to their workplace, not only as it can impact their future careers, but also as individuals can experience lasting burnout effects. Despite recognizing the role of organizational causes, research on burnout and interventions adopts a largely individualized, medical and psychological lens. Adopting a disability studies lens, this chapter aims to go beyond this individualized view of burnout and draws on 13 interviews with individuals who had a burnout to explore their experiences with burnout, lasting burnout effects and their return to work. We show how the predominant ways of thinking about burnout result in it being largely approached as an individual failure rather than an organizational problem. This leads to organizational sources of burnout being unaddressed and forces individuals returning to work to conform again to the norms of the economic system that led to their burnout in the first place

Challenging disability inequality embedded within the online recruitment process

In the last two decades traditional recruitment practices have moved onto the Internet, which has not only changed the way that jobseekers engage with job searches, but has also created additional barriers for disabled jobseekers due to un-equal access to the Internet and a lack of IT skills, compounded by inaccessible on-line recruitment processes. Within the existing literature on recruitment, these voices have been sparse. Using a UK-based sample of 22 jobseekers with visual impairments and/or learning difficulties, and 3‘committed’employers that work for or with dis-abled people, this study shows that disability inequality practices currently embedded within online recruitment processes can be successfully challenged

Burnout from an extended social model perspective: Lived experiences of burnout, lasting burnout effects and returning to work

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, workplaces were already creating a pandemic leading to the burnout of its workers. Depending on the severity, burnout can result in extended periods of inability to work, after which individuals potentially return to work. However, the effects of burnout are often not over when individuals return to their workplace, not only as it can impact their future careers, but also as individuals can experience lasting burnout effects. Despite recognizing the role of organizational causes, research on burnout and interventions adopts a largely individualized, medical and psychological lens. Adopting a disability studies lens, this chapter aims to go beyond this individualized view of burnout and draws on 13 interviews with individuals who had a burnout to explore their experiences with burnout, lasting burnout effects and their return to work. We show how the predominant ways of thinking about burnout result in it being largely approached as an individual failure rather than an organizational problem. This leads to organizational sources of burnout being unaddressed and forces individuals returning to work to conform again to the norms of the economic system that led to their burnout in the first place