Disability Management

Summary Diversity management manifests in a set of transversal business practices – under the “umbrella” of the corporate social responsibility policies – that affect the corporate culture, the strategy, the financial and control management system, the operational activities, as well as the system of relations with the stakeholders and the company reporting (Angeloni 2013; D’Amato 2009; Metallo et al. 2009; Migliaccio 2016). The growing attention paid by policy makers, businesses, and institutions to diversity management is attributable to the increased complexity of society, characterized by a multiplicity of social, cultural, and individual subjectivities tied to gender, age, ethnic origins, disability, sexual orientation, personality characteristics, cognitive styles, level of education, background, etc. In such a context disability management is conceived as a proactive strategy aimed at identifying and solving the factors that prevent people with any type of disability from accessing work (Geisen and Harder 2011). While diversity management consists in practices that an organization implements to create an inclusive climate and an organizational culture (Oberfield 2014), aimed to allow workers attitudes and capabilities flourish and ensure growth and success of their personal and professional paths, disability management is not only limited to a process or to a set of procedures (O’Brien 2013; Sabharwal 2014), but it represents a professional activity which considers all the relational aspects (personal contacts and interactions) that contribute to the success of disability management. Currently disability strategies are often implemented as a reaction to the problems of a single person or an organization, while empirical studies suggest to consider such problems in advance through appropriate policies and procedures for overcoming and preventing them (Geisen and Harder 2011). Namely, workplace disability management concerns all cases of disability from personal and congenital disabilities tothose acquired during the working period (ranging from accidents to chronic-degenerative diseases). In this sense, disability management is conceived as a proactive strategy oriented to identify and remove all the factors that prevent people, with any type of disability, from accessing to developing a professional path (Bruyére and Filiberto 2013; Rahim et al. 2017). This conception differs from a more restrictive one according to which disability management coincides with the return to work, of disable people who are already working.