While openly defending discrimination against disabled people is getting less common, I think it's important to draw the attention to the invisible, hidden and disguised here. For doing that I'll briefly introduce a conceptual framework, and then show its connection with the matter concerning disability related abuse in the workplace.
In economics information asymmetry is a very important concept. It's something that permeates both the most sophisticated negotiation forums, and really prosaic situations like buying a used car. And it got increasingly important with the separation of management and ownership that resulted from enterprises getting larger and more complex as capitalism evolved.
Different parties in any interaction have different levels of access to relevant information for making a decision about a transaction. Regarding the used car example, the seller knows exactly what kind of fuel he/she usually put in the tank, if maintenance has been made at the right time with the right components and parts, his/her driving style (which can really influence the vehicle condition), etc. On the other hand, the buyer cannot really verify this history, so he/she needs to rely on the seller as the primary info source.
But the buyer isn't stupid. He/she knows exactly that, although this info could really influence the value of the car (because of its conditions), it's in the best interest of the seller to lie, since there's no way he/she will get caught before it's too late. At first sight this can look unfair to the buyer side. But in the end, since asymmetry is an expected issue, it ends up lowering the price of all the used cars, even those that have been treated with great care and discipline. This creates even less incentives for sellers to take good care of the car prior to selling it, further reinforcing the bad market characteristic.
While this is a classic example of information asymmetry, some degree of this phenomenon can be found in almost every human interaction, and I here want to draw the attention to the corporate power settings.
As per what happens in the used car example, relationships within a corporation (or any other social organization) also greatly rely on trust to function in several situations in which there's information asymmetry. People managers are trusted by the company owners to allocate and guide their other human resources (also paid by the owners) in the most effective way, maximizing return over investment.
When managers get a fixed salary, regardless of how well the firm does in terms of return over the investment, there's an incentive to minimize efforts made. Why? Because manager influence over the firm results isn't directly observable. Therefore there's a space in which the manager can do less without being punished with income reduction, thus maximizing his/her own return on effort level.
This situation is the standard in agency relations. But in order to scale up a business, the owners don't have much choice but to delegate authority to managers. They wouldn't possibly be able to handle all the aspects of complex enterprises by themselves. Trust is good for everyone. Owners get more money for their money, and managers get jobs, power and some money too.
Information asymmetry also occurs between hierarchical management levels. More so when these different levels are located in different countries. So the upper management will also trust middle management to act on their behalf concerning the ones further down in the command chain.
If middle management is the primary point of contact for upper managers to get info about what happens in a given market, this lower leadership layer ends up getting too much power over the future of people under their direct authority. Abuse may occur, and since this person gets to be the only interface with the upper direction layer, and as long as the issues created won't affect the bigger picture, middle manager won't get busted. Abuse can go on for as long as it pleases her/him.
But what does this have to do with disability anyways? A lot. Disability creates an extra layer of asymmetry. Some conduct types that wouldn't be considered abusive if the employee doesn't have a disability, will clearly be characterized as inappropriate if disability is part of the scenario. For example, it's not abusive to request employees to use public transportation when traveling with heavy luggage. Making and enforcing such a request to someone with a physical disability is clearly a whole different situation. But there are two complications here:
1- Companies won't establish different rules of conduct, depending on who is involved. And by doing that (which one could argue is treating people equally) the company is paradoxically promoting discrimination. However, since this specific case is not described in the code of conduct, abuser will get away without any punishment.
2- Even if this situation is added to the code of conduct, there's still the matter of information asymmetry since middle manager is the one (and sometimes only) in direct contact with the actual daily situations in the locale, and there's no external third party to evaluate her/his conduct. Therefore, if middle manager has personal reasons for abusing power (for the pure pleasure of it, or even to draw some personal advantage from somebody else's work), she/he can do it without worrying about external judgement and punishment.
For these reasons, it's fundamental that disabled people are very aware of that more likely possibility, and fight for creating effective mechanisms to avoid abuse. Especially because it's very common to blame the more vulnerable party on a power struggle for not being adequately adapted, prepared, qualified, etc (even when CV proves otherwise).
In conclusion, my point is that trust is great, and can make the world a better place for everyone. However, only hoping for it to be kept is clearly not enough in most situations, especially the ones involving disabilities. Although diversity has proven positive effects on businesses, once you increase differences in people working together, there has to be an active and consistent effort to minimize hidden disadvantages. Especially when they aren't easy to detect by the very nature of human power relationships and organization.
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