Exploring employees’ coping with disability management practices at a South African university

African Journal of Disability

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Exploring employees’ coping with disability management practices at a South African university
 
Creator Moll, Aletta M.
 
Subject Higher Education psychological stress; appraisal; coping; coping theory of Lazarus and Folkman; employees with disabilities; disability management; accommodation; workplace.
Description Background: South African legislation promotes the accommodation of employees with disabilities through enabling modifications and adjustments in the workplace. The literature about the experiences of employees with disabilities in higher education environments regarding accommodation is scant. Filling the gap, this research aimed to explore how employees with disabilities at a South African university cope with disability management practices by means of accommodations.Objectives: The objectives entailed exploring the encounters of employees with disabilities regarding accommodation in the workplace, their beliefs about these encounters and the meaning that the employees with disabilities attached to them.Method: The study design is grounded in the subjectivist epistemology of social constructionism and took on a qualitative approach. The bounded single-case study concerned formative evaluations. The homogeneous purposive sampling strategy amounted to 13 employees with disabilities. Twelve semi-structured interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: The participants relied strongly on self-agency to address splintered or unresponsive disability management practices. To avoid marginalisation, they worked extra hard for securing a rightful place at work. Misconceptions of able-bodied peers or managers triggered psychological stress.Conclusion: Coping with the university’s disability management practices is mainly a stressful challenge, consequently endangering people’s well-being.Contribution: Exploring the coping of university employees with disabilities through accommodations filled a gap in the literature.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor The research was funded by the Women in Research Support Programme obtained by the principal member of the research project [2020_RPSC_010_RS].
Date 2023-07-25
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/ajod.v12i0.1123
 
Source African Journal of Disability; Vol 12 (2023); 11 pages 2226-7220 2223-9170
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://ajod.org/index.php/ajod/article/view/1123/2403 https://ajod.org/index.php/ajod/article/view/1123/2404 https://ajod.org/index.php/ajod/article/view/1123/2405 https://ajod.org/index.php/ajod/article/view/1123/2406
 
Coverage South Africa 2020-2022 Employees with a disability at a university
Rights Copyright (c) 2023 Aletta M. Moll https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT