Managing Diversity and Disability Legislation: Catalysts for Eradicating Discrimination in the Workplace?

Abstract

Two apparently positive and interrelated pressures for change currently exist to reduce discrimination against the disabled at work. The first is the managing diversity movement, which focuses on organisations responding to the individual needs and aspirations of all disadvantaged people in the labour market as a way of eradicating discriminatory practices (Ross and Schneider, 1992). The second is through legislation which, for the first time in the UK, provides a statutory right for disabled employees or job applicants not to be discriminated against on the grounds of their disability. Both approaches emphasise the need to combat discrimination against the disabled through focusing on the individual needs of people who are labelled as having a disability. This chapter consequently explores the extent to which these apparently complimentary approaches to dissolving discrimination can actually achieve their ends.