Page 263 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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that managers' stated attitudes do not reflect their hiring behavior (Wilgosh
& Meuller, 1989). Second, overwhelmingly positive statements can be read
as a sign of paternalism—an issue that we discuss later. Third, reports from
people with disabilities contradict these findings (e.g., Crudden & McB­
room, 1999). Finally, most respondents to these surveys are human resource
managers who may have more positive attitudes than other people in gen­
eral. This is supported by the finding that the one of the biggest problems
reported by manager surveys is the way coworkers (not human resource
managers) react to persons with disabilities (Bruyere, 2000; Greenwood,
Shiner, & Johnson, 1991; Hahn, 1996; McFarlin, Song, & Sonntag, 1991).
Psychologically Based Disability Discrimination Research
In an extensive review of the impact of disability on personnel decisions,
we uncovered 37 published studies (a summary of these studies is avail­
able from the first author) that allowed one to assess whether there was
discrimination. In order to assess workplace discrimination, a study must
include a nondisabled control group, hold performance constant, and mea­
sure a work-related dependent variable (e.g., hiring decision, performance
evaluation). We found several studies that examined discrimination be­
tween different types of disabilities, but did not have a nondisabled control
group (e.g., Bordieri & Drehmer, 1987; Gouvier, Steiner, Jackson, Schlater,
& Rain, 1991; Jones & Stone, 1995; Koser, Matsuyama, & Kopelman, 1999).
Most of the included studies focused on selection or interviewing (24).
The reminder focused on performance evaluations and/or employee in­
teractions, acceptance, and inclusion. One other note of interest is that the
number of studies doubled since 1990, the year that the ADA was passed.
Our review indicates that this research is inconclusive, sometimes find­
ing that disability results in overly negative (discriminatory) evaluations
and decisions (11 studies), overly positive evaluations (5), no effect for
disability on personnel decisions (6), or mixed results depending on the
disability or dependent variable (15). For this line of research to advance,
we believe that several issues ranging from the methodological to the con­
ceptual need to be addressed in future research. These issues are study
context, generalizing across disabilities, expanding the range of behaviors
studied, and conceptual considerations.

Study Context. The overwhelming majority of these studies (30) were
conducted in the laboratory using student or MBA manager subjects. It
is easy to say that more fieldwork needs to be done, but it is particu­
larly difficult to study disability discrimination in the workplace. First,
very few people with disabilities disclose to the organization. If disclosure