Employer-Disability Organization Partnership for Hiring, Training, and Accommodating People with Disabilities in Mississippi

Abstract: The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) (1990) and Rehabilitation Act (1973) require employers to provide equal opportunity for hiring, training, and providing reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities (PWDs). However, several PWDs still face unequal treatment due to concerns of employers that PWDs cannot perform essential functions of the jobs applied for (Carrl & Namkun, 2021), difficulty in integrating them easily with the organization (Bonaccio et al., 2020), and complex legal procedures in employing PWDs (Moussa & Abou-Zeid, 2019). The disability statistics annual report shows that only 38.4% of PWDs who apply for jobs are hired compared to 75.8% of people without disabilities, and this disparity is increasing (Houtenville et al., 2022). Some PWDs still earn less than $3.50 per hour (American Association of People with Disabilities [AAPD], 2023).
Despite employers' concerns about PWDs, some employers are increasingly committed to hiring, training, retaining, and providing accommodation for PWDs through partnerships with disability organizations (Kessler Foundation, 2022). The ADA (1990) supports employer-disability partnerships to provide flexible employment processes, reasonable accommodation, and job training for PWDs. Organizations such as IBM, Microsoft, Walmart, Bank of America, etc., have partnered with disability organizations like the National Organization on Disability, AAPD, National Business & Disability Council, etc., over the years. Nonetheless, limited data is available on how employers hire, train, and provide accommodation for PWDs through partnerships with disability organizations (Bonaccio et al., 2020).
Researching employer-disability partnerships may help overcome negative concerns of employers about employing PWDs, especially the lawful and technical complexities, and assist the government and non-government agencies in setting funding priorities and improving policies, programs, and strategies to support the increase in the participation of PWDs in the workforce. The research question is, how will the employer-disability organization partnership benefit the employers and PWDs during the hiring, training, and accommodation of PWDs in the workplace within Mississippi? The study is guided by the planned behavior theory by Ajzen (1991), which discussed the ideas behind the low recruitment, hiring, and retention of PWDs; the system theory by Lugwig (1940), which explains the need to provide reasonable accommodation and retaining PWDs; and the human capital theory by Becker (1981) that explains the importance of training and educating PWDs to increase their performance and organizational productivity.
The study will utilize qualitative research design because of its flexibility in disability studies (Bonaccio et al., 2020). According to Hesse-Bider (2017), qualitative research design is a strategy to gather qualitative data about research problems. The study population includes upper managers, supervisors, and co-workers of PWDs in employers' organizations and managers of disability organizations. This study will use a purposive sampling technique because it is “restricted to a group that is homogeneous by selecting a subset of people who share some features in common” (Meltzoff & Cooper, 2018, p. 71).
The semi-structured and in-depth interviews will elicit information from each participant within 1 hour in Mississippi after IRB approval through multiple devices, such as digital audio/video (Zoom), field notes, and field memos. The semi-structured and in-depth interviews allow the researchers to offer a balance between flexibility and a standardized approach, ask open-ended questions, and provide deeper exploration to gain insights into the research questions from the research participants (Sullivan & Forrester, 2019). Mississippi was selected for this study because it has more PWDs than many other states in the United States (Elflein, 2023).
The research will adopt a thematic data analysis method due to its flexibility, in-depth exploration, integration of multiple perspectives (Sullivan & Forrester, 2019), and broad applicability across disability studies (Bonaccio et al., 2020). In utilizing Sullivan & Forrester’s (2019) ideas, the researchers will start with initial coding by separating the data into meaningful segments and assigning descriptive codes to each segment. Similar codes will be grouped to form preliminary themes, and the themes will represent patterns, ideas, or concepts that emerge from the data.
The themes will be reviewed and refined to know if they are coherent, represent the data, and capture the participants’ experiences. The themes will be defined and named to develop clear definitions for each theme and describe what each theme represents in each research question. A narrative will be written to create a report representing the researcher’s findings. To ensure the study's validity and reliability, member checking (getting participant feedback), peer debriefing, and maintaining an audit trail technique will be utilized (Hesse-Bider, 2017). The study may contribute to understanding the factors contributing to effective workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives in organizations.