Stages in an enabling process: Inclusion of people with disabilities at city gardens

Purpose: This paper analyses the process of change related with understanding the inclusion of people with disabilities. For this purpose, we selected an organization with a long history of inclusion processes that allows for a longitudinal analysis. The organizational practices related to the process of inclusion have been evolving since they started in 1989, becoming, apparently, more enabling. Building on understanding the change processes in diversity, equality and inclusion processes (Ely & Meyerson, 2000), this paper examines: (1) the organizational context that made this evolution possible; (2) the role of different agents intervening in the process; (3) the evolving understanding of disability underlying in the inclusion process. Originality: Research on the inclusion process for people with disabilities is still scarce. While change analysis has been applied to different sources of exclusion and inequality in organizations such as gender (Ely and Meyerson, 2000), there has been no analysis (to our knowledge) of organizational change processes in the field of disability inclusion). Theoretical framework: Our paper builds on the literature on disability analysis and inclusion. We will use the social model approach to disability (Oliver, 1996; Thomas, 1999, 2007) as well as recent discussions on the medical and social model approaches to the study of disability and their use in organisational studies (Foster and Fosh, 2010; Williams and Mavin, 2012). More specifically, we will further refine the model proposed by the author (Folguera, 2013) linking Individual expressions of identity and organisational understandings of disability. Preliminary findings: Preliminary research has identified that the company analysed has gone through different stages in its understanding of the inclusion of people with disabilities. Relevance and practical implications: People with disabilities find opportunities for working and professional inclusion in different types of organizations. We have previously (Folguera, 2013) classified these organizations as 'enabling', 'not enabling' or 'disabling organizations'. Organizations are sometimes 'stuck' in their own understanding of disability. Their inclusion practices resulting from this understanding may generate different ways of experiencing disability identity in the included employees. Our research aims to conceptualise a process of progressive rethinking of this understanding of disability and, resulting from this, of progressive change in the resulting organizational practices or interventions.