Narrating a Prototypical Disabled Employee

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how an organization narratively constructs its prototypical disabled employee. Data comprise public narratives of the Government of India, the country’s largest employer of disabled persons. Narratives during 2008–2016 were considered as this timespan witnessed the design of inclusive legislation that emphasized defining disabled persons and their entitlements. Findings indicate that the label of “disadvantage” was consistently used to portray the target employee. Alongside other narrative material suggesting, for example that the target employee was someone who required employment assistance, this label was supplied to external audiences to convert them into potential partners. This supply of narrative material further reinforced the portrayal of the target employee. Consistent use of this expansive label subsumed changing definitions of who is a disabled person, allowed for aggregations with diverse disadvantaged collectives, and accommodated changes in employment entitlements and ecosystem partners, thereby allowing the reading of change in stable narratives. The contributions of this paper lie in highlighting how the consistent use of an expansive label can cast narrative stability and change as complementary, and in suggesting that narrating a prototypical employee entails shaping the setting outside the employing organization toward employee categorization.